


Heaven Was Full

by Chianine



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Angst, Dom!John/Sub!Bane, Drug Use, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, M/M, Mild Cruelty, Sexual Tension, Urination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:49:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chianine/pseuds/Chianine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by this anonymous prompt on tdkr kink:</p>
<p>After the events of TDKR Blake decides to visit Bane in prison just to see what he's like one on one. Pure curiosity. Of course their first few meetings are horrible and bad and Bane makes threats and whatnot...but the more interest that Blake shows towards Bane, the more Bane wants to open up to him.</p>
<p>After numerous visits, Blake starts getting Bane to open up. He's still hard and terrifying and cold, but he's opening up. This happens every time he goes to visit Bane until he's finally warmed the bigger man up to him completely. Blake falls in love instantly and believes more than anything that he can 'change' Bane.</p>
<p>Maybe he can't change him completely...but he'll damn well try. Even if all Bane learns is how to love again, Blake will take it as a win. Even if Bane is still terrifying when he's angry and is quick to get heated, he's mostly got himself under control for Blake, and for Blake alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The sound of the phone ringing at 3:43 am startled John, but it did not wake him. 

He had spent most nights lying awake, his thoughts not letting him rest after days spent exploring the caves beneath Wayne Manor. He was haunted by the memory of his dead hero, unsure what Wayne had meant for John to do with his inheritance, but confident that it was a secret he was supposed to treasure. Like his broken city, he felt suspended between a traumatized past and an uncertain future, waiting for someone or something to make a decision for him.

John checked the caller ID and saw Jim Gordon's name.

“Commissioner? Everything all right?”

He hadn't spoken to Gordon since Bruce Wayne's funeral, but he thought about him everyday, knowing how he had disappointed the man who had come closest to being a father figure in his life. Every night when John turned on the news he saw images of GPD making more and more arrests, smoking out safe houses full of escaped convicts and mercenaries, and even getting embroiled in full-blown shoot-outs in the street. John knew he should be there, and he could guess at how most of the guys on the force probably viewed his resignation- the chicken-shit move of a hothead who can't handle the heat when things really get tough. He thought the same thing about himself at last once a day.

“John. I can't talk long. Everything's fine but I need you to meet me at Gotham General ICU. Get here as soon as you can and don't tell anyone where you're going. I need you here fast, son. Don't get a ticket or anything but don't waste your time, OK? Oh yeah and John?”

“Yes..?”

“How've you been? all right? Did I wake you?”

John cleared his throat, “No... I'm fine, but...”  
.  
“OK then hurry up and get down here I need you ASAP...”

John laughed nervously, “Commissioner! Can you tell me what's going on? I mean, is anyone hurt?”

Silence. 

And then Gordon whispered sharply, ”Blake, we got him.”

“Got who?”

But he knew as soon as the words escaped his lips and it made his mouth go dry. They had been searching for Bane's body for weeks, and some were already predicting the worst.

“You found the body?”

“No son. We have _him_ . He's alive.”

 

Gordon met John in the Gotham General's parking garage so that he could have a cigarette. John didn't know what surprised him more- seeing Gordon smoking or the fact that he would let the mercenary out of his sight for even one minute. 

He assured John, “he ain't goin' anywhere, son. Believe me.”

Gordon told his story with the energy he was known for, but it was obvious from the dark circles under his eyes and his disjointed manner of speaking that he was overworked. John was again reminded of how he had abandoned his duties.

The commissioner's crews had been cleaning out the tunnels, where most of the fugitives were still hiding. After a hefty exchange of gunfire (that left several officers injured) with a band of skilled mercenaries that refused to surrender, they overcame the men and discovered what they were protecting so furiously- an unconscious, nearly dead comrade of gigantic size with his face wrapped in bloody gauze like a mummy. The officers obviously had their suspicions immediately, simply from the man's appearance and the fact that they had to kill three gunmen to get to him, but when they opened the satchel that his head was resting on, everything was confirmed.

“What did they find?”

That's when John noticed the greasy rough canvas bag Gordon was carrying. He threw it at John, who noticed a barn-like odor that it radiated, like a petting zoo he had visited as a kid, as he caught it and set it on the hood of his car.

“Open it.”

John felt apprehensive about Gordon's command, almost as if the bag was a kind of Pandora's box. The dried blood stains that adorned the bag appeared dark brown on the coarse green material. This is not exactly proper police procedure, John thought, as he undid the buckle that secured the bag's main compartment. Reaching his hand inside, all he could feel some crumpled papers and rags. As the musty smell of the contents filled his nostrils, he gave Gordon a questioning glance.

“Dig around, it's in there.”

John shoved his hand deeper into the bag until his fingertips met with what felt like cold metal coils. He gripped the large, awkwardly-shaped mass of straps and broken plastic they belonged to and pulled it out of the bag. What he was looking at made him so nauseous he had swallow before he could breathe again.

The mask.

“I told you.” Gordon said, flicking his cigarette into a muddy snowbank.

 

The double doors of the ICU slid open to welcome John and Gordon into a world of industrial cleaner and fluorescent light, a total contrast to the world implicated by the third-world barnyard stench of the military satchel that now sat in the trunk of John's car.

At the end of a short hall a solitary policeman stood in front of an open doorway. This had to be Bane's room. John turned his head to see a middle-aged nurse in Snoopy-themed scrubs look up from the reception desk as they walked by. This woman had seen children, mothers, husbands, and wives come in through these doors and die right in front of her. She had even been through the occupation and had seen all of its horrors. And now she had the world's most notorious terrorist in her care. 

He smiled at her when Gordon stopped to flash his badge, hoping to communicate his appreciation. She, however, only took note of the badge and nodded her head toward the room at the end of the hall. How could he blame her when she had probably spent her entire night working to save the man who tried to blow all of Gotham to hell?

Seeing the lonely officer at the end of the hall made him question his thinking- why was there not more security? Maybe she _didn't_ know who was in her ICU...

“Gordon,” John said, pulling him to the side of the hall in front of a glittering water fountain, “do these people know what's going on here?”

Gordon glanced nervously around and gestured for John to step into the men's room they stood next to. He hoped no one got the wrong idea as Gordon gently pushed him in.

“The man you're about to see in that room is registered as 'Unidentified Suspect,' OK? I have no obligation to make a positive ID on him at this point. It's not like he was carrying a passport in his back-pocket.” Gordon lowered his voice, “The contents of that bag have only been seen by us, and two of my most trusted officers. They don't want to see the Bureau or the Agency get another chance to fuck things up with Bane like they have repeatedly in the past any more than we do, so they're not talking. Remember what you said about structures becoming shackles? Well, I've been thinking you may have been onto something with that.”

Reading the concerned look in John's eyes, Gordon put a hand on his shoulder, “Look I'm not trying to do anything crazy here. I just think that if we play our cards right, we can keep Bane here in Gotham. I mean, after the CIA and the FBI humiliated themselves and sacrificed several of their agents to Bane, who was it that finally was able to take him out?”

_Batman_ , John thought, but decided to put it a different way, “The people of Gotham know how to handle a man like Bane.”

“That's right, son.” Gordon said, giving his shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

 

The uniformed officer gave them a polite smile as John and Gordon stepped into the room. It was fairly spacious inside, and a large, thin curtain surrounded the bed and obscured the figure upon it.

A doctor stood beside the curtain, scribbling onto a clipboard. When he saw Gordon he smiled and approached.

John couldn't help wondering if everyone here would be so relaxed if they knew they who was laying on that bed.

“How's he doing?” Gordon asked nonchalantly.

“Well, he's definitely going to make it, his vitals are all fine and he isn't suffering from nearly as much internal damage as I would expect to find in a man who basically had a miniature rocket fired at him. It's miraculous, really.”

“Hmm.” Gordon said, raising his eyebrows. “Miraculous.”

“What really interests me is the facial injuries. Some of the tissue tearing is definitely fresh, but the worst of it looks to be from years ago, with evidence of horribly amateur suture work. And it's the older injuries that really are going to be the bigger problems because they were treated so poorly (which isn't a surprise, knowing what part of the world most of these guys came from.) These treatments caused the muscle and nerve endings to heal in an awful mess because the kind of trauma the patient suffered was clearly beyond the abilities of whoever had cared for him. The jaw was dislocated and fractured multiple times, teeth have been crushed into the skull as far up as where the nasal cavity should be and much of the flesh around the nose and mouth have been lost to what looks to me like past infections. Honestly, I don't know how he could have lived everyday without some kind of apparatus that would hold the lower jaw up and keep him from losing salivation out of the completely exposed mouth and nasal cavity ...”

Gordon and John exchanged knowing glances.

The doctor continued, “I've never seen anything like it. I mean, I've seen worse trauma-much worse-but nothing that has been so clumsily treated and left to heal for what looks like fifteen or twenty years. I mean, this would be just mind-numbingly excruciating to live with. Any normal man would beg to be killed with an injury like that. And this one has been living with it for at least fifteen years. It's unheard of.”

The doctor shrugged and looked back at the curtained bed.

“All in all, commissioner, it's going to be a lot of work, and I wouldn't put it so bluntly if I was speaking about a normal patient to his family, but it in his case especially, the results are not going to be pretty, even if the reconstructive surgery he's going to need goes as well as possible. But then again, whoever he is, he's probably never going to see anything but the inside of a prison cell, so it doesn't really matter.”

“That's right,” Gordon nodded and put out his hand, “get some rest doctor, he'll still be here in the morning.”

The doctor shook Gordon's hand and walked out, leaving him and John alone in the room. A spaghetti tangle of wires were strewn all over the floor, flowing out from under the curtain and attaching the man on the bed to the machines that were alive with electrical hums, rhythmic beeps, and digital read-outs that monitored his breathing and heartbeat.

“Wanna take a look?” Gordon said.

John shrugged his shoulders, trying to hide the morbid curiosity he so hated seeing in civilians when he worked crime scenes.

As they approached the curtain, John became aware of the mustiness he recognized from the satchel mixing with the pungent odor of infection. Gordon raised his fingertips to the lip in the curtain and then reluctantly paused. He began to gingerly pull back, and both men started slightly at the sound of the curtain rings sliding along the rod attached to the ceiling, as if they were worried about waking the patient. 

“I'm sure he's totally knocked out on whatever drugs they gave him.” Gordon tried to disguise his trepidation with whispered words that betrayed him.

John had never actually seen Bane in the flesh. Everyone had seen the terrifying news clips and John had heard the stories from those who had been in his presence during the occupation (though he assumed they were mostly exaggeration) but nothing could prepare him for what he saw before him.  
   
As Gordon continued to pull back the curtain, the first thing John noticed was Bane's hand-cuffed right arm hanging limply off the side of the gurney. The image of such a powerful hand lying motionless epitomized Bane's exhausted and defeated state, and John was annoyed at his own feeling of concern for the purplish tint of the slightly curled fingertips, indicative of the painful parasthesia that he himself often suffered from at night when he slept on his arm wrong.

The right foot, also cuffed to the railing, extended past the bottom of the gurney; the overwhelmed bed never being intended for a man of this size. Bane's bruised and unwashed skin shone with an antibiotic salve, and the nudity of his lower body had only been addressed with a thin sheet that was bunched up around his groin area, still revealing the edges of what looked like a thick forest of pubic hair. This embarrassed John, who stepped from behind Gordon towards the patient's head to avoid the view.

Now was John's chance to see for himself the ghastliness the doctor had described. A typical oxygen mask was placed over the patient's mouth, but unlike the wide black mask that lay in John's car, the narrow triangular shape revealed much more. The frayed flesh that could be seen around the mouth reminded John of clay that had been cut with a wire. The lips did indeed appear to be entirely ripped away, as the opening could be seen beyond the mouthpiece on boath sides. Tape, soaked with puss and saliva, was being used to seal the mask edges, and was applied directly to the raw flesh, making John involuntarily wince. Air still escaped from the side of the mask with each exhalation, causing gooey flesh to bubble audibly in a gash that reached to the exposed back molar.

The horror inside the mask was partially obscured by condensation, but John allowed himself to closely scrutinize the gory sight. When John had been listening to the doctor speaking, the image that came to his mind was much like something that one would find on one of the heavy metal albums that the older boys at St. Swithins would listen to. A grinning skull-faced demon with straight teeth and clean bone instead of skin. But Bane was a harrowing assault on the eyes. The nose and upper jaw were entirely caved in and split, with teeth scattered like shrapnel from an exploded landmine. It reminded John of a nature documentary he had once seen on starfish. There was a single facial cavity that began just below his eyes and extended down to his chin.

“Son of a bitch is worse off than a Picasso.” Gordon said, making a face like he was smelling piss.

John had seen corpses in his time, so it wasn't the viscera that disturbed him. What John couldn't help being disturbed by was the combination of unlikely extremes that were exhibited on the gurney-vital and helpless, repulsive and angelic, pitiful and terrifying. The hideous mouth found a strange counterpart in the pathetic innocence of the closed eyelids. There was an agonized, almost enraptured expression that reminded John of the martyrs he learned about in Sunday school. Long, motionless eyelashes added to the celestial quality of the sight while bubbling saliva continued to ooze onto the pillow beneath the patient's head. 

The breathing apparatus beat out a steady rhythm that was obeyed by Bane's rising and falling chest. John was mesmerized by the movement, which evinced the hot and obstinate force of life in the man that lay before him. Even for a large man, his lungs seemed greedy for air, defying the broken bones, bruised muscle and burnt skin, eager to take all it could in an effort to satisfy its will to survive. John was captivated, and wondered if the heart buried inside was beating with the same lustful determination. He turned to look at the EKG as quick footsteps approached him and Gordon. It was the cop guarding the door.

“Hey boss! The receptionist called up. She said some guys from the Tribune are downstairs and they wanna know who we got up here, whether it's a convict or a mercenary or what. She says there on their way up...”

“Jesus Christ! Don't those assholes ever sleep?” Gordon ran quickly out of the room with the ineffectual officer trailing behind, leaving John alone with Bane.

John looked back at the repetitions on the EKG screen. They seemed healthy enough, but John still didn't feel satisfied. He wanted to know what they _felt_ like. 

He put his right hand over his own chest while facing the monitor, hoping to find his own beat in rhythm with the tempo of Bane's. Nothing. He straightened his back, and pressed down on his right hand with his left, focused on finding his own beat. Still nothing. Just to be sure he was still alive, he found his pulse by tucking two fingers beneath his jaw. 

John could hear Gordon arguing with the reporters out front in the reception area of the ICU while he enjoyed the delicate thump on his fingertips. The tempting certainty of privacy was making it impossible to resist his curiosity. He lifted the fingers from his throat and slowly moved them over the body in front of him.

He felt the heat immediately, with his hand still just hovering in the air. He remembered sunburns, sore joints and infected cuts, the heat the human body generates when it is working to heal itself, and realized suddenly how alive with struggle Bane's body must be. Listening again to the arguing voices in the distance and assuring himself that he was safe, he dropped his palm down onto the heaving chest.

The throb was dark and heavy like a bass drum and unbelievably distinct. The effect was intoxicating to John who closed his eyes as he allowed his mind to give in to the sensation. But only a few moments could pass like this before he caught himself. What the hell was he doing? He pulled his hand away quickly, the palm clinging stubbornly to Bane's moist skin for only a moment. He involuntarily lifted his hand to his face, taking in the concentrated musk and barnyard odor that lingered there.

The tension in the voices outside had relaxed, and John guessed that Gordon would be returning soon. Looking down at the gurney, his eyes again fell on the cuffed arm, now turning darkly purple. He could not in good conscience leave it like that, telling himself that he was the first one to notice instead of the only one to care. Cruel psychopath or not, he was a man in Gotham's custody now, and it was ethics, not tenderness, that required John to do the right thing.

He lifted, with both hands, the massive arm, which felt as grimy and sticky as it looked. The limb was even heavier than John expected, and too wide to wedge between Bane's torso and the gurney's railing. After laying it on top of the thin bar, the arm slid back over the side, the chain clanking loudly. 

Worried about the sound, John looked back towards the door, not wanting to be seen touching the patient. The coast was still clear, so he decided to take the time to slightly adjust the width of the bar to allow more room for the arm to lay on top of the bed. As he fixed the railing and lifted the thick arm onto the bed, John noticed a light flutter of eyelashes from the sleeping body, but thought nothing of it until he glanced back to two wide, blue-gray eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. He was still touching the man's arm with both hands when John registered with panic that Bane was awake.

John froze, staring in shock at Bane's open eyes, which seemed to be searching for something past the white ceiling. Finally he succumbed to instinct and tried to speak, but his cracked voice only allowed a small grunt. At the sound of John's voice, Bane's eyes focused directly on him, and without hesitation the handcuffed arm effortlessly broke the chain and gripped John's wrist. While John's mind was still processing the horror that was occurring, the pressure on his wrist increased painfully. Bane continued to squeeze until John could do nothing but cry out with complete abandon, the scream rising out of his throat as he sank to his knees. John continued screaming several seconds after Gordon and company had pulled him away and plunged a long needle into Bane's arm, causing him to return to his previous state of unconsciousness.

 

“Got quite a scare up there, didn't you son?” Gordon heckled John as he settled behind the wheel of his car and slammed the door, eager to return home. 

“You said he was drugged.”

“What? You think that was my fault? How was I supposed to know he was going to wake up like that? I mean I've never... I don't know what would cause a man to just... ”

“I didn't do anything!” John blurted out. To hide his mistake, he continued, “Look, he's dangerous, you saw how he broke those hand-cuffs like they were plastic. And you think canvas straps and a cop who can't even handle a couple of reporters is going to keep this hospital safe? I mean, my wrist... ” he rubbed the red hand prints that were still there, “he could have broken my wrist. Why do you think I screamed like that?”

“Its all right,” Gordon laughed condescendingly, “we've all been under a lot of stress lately. You just go home and get some rest. When I see you Monday morning at the precinct I won't mention it. Like it never happened.” 

“Excuse me, Commissioner?”

“You've had a nice vacation, John, but its time you got back to work. You didn't really think I turned in those resignation papers, did you?”

“Is this why you called me down here? Thinking the thrill of being in on your little secret would be enough bait to bring me back onto the force?”

“Well hasn't it?” Gordon winked.

John shook his head, smiling, “We'll talk about this in your office, Monday.” John tried to roll up his window, but was quickly stopped by Gordon.

“Wait!” He leaned down, his deadly serious face close to John's and his finger pointing at the trunk, “John, get rid of that bag, you hear me? And don't tell anyone what you know. _Anyone_.” His eyes were piercing.

“Aren't we going to need it when the time comes to prove his identity and try him?” John genuinely felt confused.

“Get rid of it.”

The tone was intimidating, but after the experience with Bane a few moments before that had left a wet spot on his crotch, John was warmed up. He took the conversation a few steps forward, guessing at the Commissioner's intentions.

“Commissioner, the people of this city want to know that they can sleep at night without having to fear Bane... ”

Gordon cut him off. “I don't care! My job is to keep them safe, not to make them _feel_ safe. I learned too much this last time around, Blake. I lost too much. It's not about believing anymore, it's about doing. How can I keep Gotham safe if I let them hang Bane? He knows too much. We need to know how he accomplished what he did so we can make sure it never happens again!”

“How can you convince this city to let you keep him alive? Thousands died in the occupation, and thousands more are still missing, maybe never to be heard from again. He's a murderer.”

“We can keep him alive if nobody knows he is.”

John felt a chill go down his spine. This isn't what he meant when he spoke about structures becoming shackles.

John just shook his head without looking at Gordon. “I'll see you Monday morning, sir,” John adopted an officious tone and began rolling up his window.

Gordon stuck his hand in the window, forcing John to look at him. “I need you on this, son. You're the only one who could ever get him to talk. He would trust you. He would see in you... " Gordon paused, looking for the right words, " ...something honest, something he could believe in, like I do.”

The desperation in his voice touched John, who felt his emotions suddenly give up. He was exhausted, unable to tell right from wrong. He needed to go back to bed.

“OK Jim.” He had never called him that before. “I'll see you on Monday.”

Gordon was still leaning on the car when he threw it into reverse.

“Mind the bag, son!”

Now John was just annoyed. In order to avoid running the old man over he had to promise.

“Yeah, yeah. I got it!”

 

Waste management was just one of the many municipal operations that had been struggling to get back on track since the end of the occupation. This meant that the overflowing dumpster behind John's apartment was less than an ideal place to hide a piece of evidence on par with JFK's magic bullet.

John sighed as he looked at the garbage bin spilling rotten food and diapers all over the alley. He did not want to deal with this right now. The bag could not just be thrown anywhere and he was too tired to drive around searching for the perfect spot. Plus, only half of John wanted to get rid of it. He still did not completely understand Gordon's plans and didn't want to do anything that could not be undone later. That last thought convinced him, and he started driving out of the alley to his building's parking garage.

The side street that led to the parking entrance also contained a dumpster where he saw a mother and her two young sons rummaging through the trash. He accidentally made eye contact with the woman as he slowly passed her family. Times were tough, John thought, and looked away in shame. He was glad then that he had not just tossed the backpack for them to find.

Sitting in his assigned parking slot, it took John a total of eight minutes to decide to carry the bag up to his apartment. He imagined every unlikely possibility that might occur from his leaving it in the car before settling on taking it up, as if he was convincing himself that it was reason and not desire that was driving him. He walked to his trunk and lifted it out as casually as if it was his gym bag, and smiled sweetly to the elderly woman who grimaced at the stench that filled up the elevator.

In his room, he felt safe. Or more precisely, he felt the mask was safe. Sitting on his bed, he opened the bag and began yanking out the contents roughly. Papers, covered with foreign writing. Oily rags, blood soaked. Metal shards. He threw them all on the floor disrespectfully. At the bottom of the bag he found the treasure he was looking for. He pulled it out, and looked at it for the first time by himself. After seeing what had hid beneath it, he understood the comfort and solace it had provided the owner.

He wondered how many had seen what he had that day; many of Bane's most devoted followers probably never had. To his army, he had been invulnerable.

He stroked the mask, looking closely at the design, impressed by the craftsmanship. The straps were not adjustable; the thing had been made for him, and of course, who else would need it? The rough spots and scratches on the straps were silent about the history they recorded. John ran a tender finger over a few, as if the caress would urge them to speak. The skin of his palm snagged lightly on the torn coils of the mouthpiece where it had been damaged. This at least had something to say: there was a white residue around the torn coils, likely from escaped gas. John touched a bit of it to his tongue and recognized the taste of an opiate-based narcotic, probably morphine.

He turned the mask over to look inside. The tale told from this angle was one of imprisonment and self-sacrifice. A man locks away his face and drugs his humanity in favor of becoming something more than human: a legend, or an ideal, incorruptible. A cyborg is a being that is part man, part machine. And Bane was most certainly dependent on his machine parts.

It struck John that this mask was indeed as much a part of Bane as a hand or foot would be. Perhaps for Bane there was no 'behind-the-mask,' for him the mask was his face, the coils and valves as comfortable and familiar to him as stubble and an old mole are to other men.

He lifted the mask closer to his face and adjusted the light on his bed to see more clearly. Again he was impressed by the quality. Where would Bane find such a fine craftsman to make this for him? Who would work this hard for a terrorist like Bane? And why, if he could afford to commission the mask, would he not just get himself the surgery that he was going to get at Gotham General a long time ago?

The passionate and brave curiosity that had already gotten John into so much trouble this morning was again bucking inside him. He fiddled with what looked like a clasp at the back of the mask until it opened. Then with half his mind screaming at himself to stop and the other half resigned to the strange desire, he brought the mask over his head and moved the clamp smoothly back into place.

John inhaled deeply, pushing his face forward into the mouth piece. His lungs filled with a familiar smell he could not immediately place but found eerily domestic. After a few breaths he recognized the scent from his pillow, and guessed that it was the dried saliva that would probably be invariably spilling out of Bane's mouth like the doctor had said. John had always been a drooler when he slept, and so the scent had a comforting effect on him. He continued breathing steadily, intoxicated by the sour salival odor and the warmth and heaviness of the object. He closed his eyes and relaxed his jaw, enjoying the support of the mask beneath his chin. 

Drowsiness began to take hold of John, and if he had turned slightly to the mirror to see his reflection wearing the mask as he leaned back onto his pillow, he might have been too horrified to have fallen asleep with the thing still covering his face.


	2. Chapter 2

It was no accident that Bane's burial was scheduled at exactly the same time as the Gotham River Memorial Ceremony. It had been Gordon's idea to draw attention away from the interment as much as possible, and even the trashiest papers would have their reporters covering the Memorial service, where most of Gotham's richest and most powerful had met a watery death-the same one that Gordon himself had narrowly avoided.

The reasons for raising the memorial were more practical than anything else; Bane had sent hundreds out on the ice, and lately body parts had been washing up to the much to the horror of the bathing and fishing populace, the few people who were making an attempt at a normal life in Gotham. The city chose to put up a kind of net around the area where they figured most of the remains would be, and zone it officially as hollowed ground. There was also a veiled monument they had erected, but John's curiosity was uncharacteristically low as he waited for the service to end.

John, with his head down to avoid the constant flashes from photographers, stood beside Gordon in a long line of officers that had been invited to appear behind the new mayor as a gave his speech. While the echoing words recalled dark memories for the men around them, John and Gordon had their thoughts firmly in the present, but at a different place. They were in the potter's field behind Blackgate Prison, where part of a man was being interred under a simple four-letter name with only two people to stand at his graveside- the priest performing the service and the man who will pile the dirt over his coffin. 

John heard the familiar vibrating sound he had been waiting for. Gordon lifted a hand to his breast pocket and took out his phone, looked at it for only a moment, and replaced it. John waited, staring at Gordon, who looked at him and winked.

“Then it's done?” John whispered impatiently.

“Yes. It's done.”

And that was it. Bane was dead and in the ground, No one had shown, no one had cared. The man simply no longer existed. Gotham, the FBI and the CIA, the entire world was satisfied that Bane was no longer. No questions were asked, and no doubts raised.

John wished that he could share in the feeling of relief that this had given his city, to feel the how the shadow of fear had lifted from it when Gordon announced that Bane's body had been identified by two of his militants. But John could only feel the staggering weight of his and Gordon's new responsibility. He had not been able too sleep since that press conference, imagining what kind of monsters they would look like, how they would explain, if anyone ever came close to suspecting...

John wondered if he would ever stop worrying. Even with one body in the ground, there was still the more problematic one on the operating table. That living body, a collection of scar tissue and muscle, had no connection to any records, paper, electronic, or otherwise, anywhere in the world. When John and Gordon had been pretending to think they had identified a forty-three pound pile of butcher's offal as Bane the CIA had stepped in. A close call, but it worked out, though, because within three days they came back saying that there was no fingerprint or DNA evidence available to confirm or deny that this was Bane's body, and the eyewitness reports that were being used in conjunction with the location of the remains were the most that anyone had to go on.

“Besides,” the CIA man had told Gordon and John privately, “if Bane had survived, he would already be operating today. And if Bane were operating today, we would know about it.” 

Of course. Idiots. 

John and Gordon had nodded humbly to the smirking CIA man and let him go on his merry, overconfident way. Gordon was right. The federal agencies were either corrupt, useless, or a combination of the two. Whichever way, they could not be trusted.

As they watched the agent walk away, John asked Gordon, “What do you think they'd, do, if they had him?”

“Let him go, to see which way he'd run.”

In response to John's disbelieving look, Gordon went on, “They'd use him as bait for a bigger fish.”

“Bigger than Bane?”

“There's always a bigger fish. For them.”

 

At the sound of clapping John was brought back to his senses. The entire line of officers were turning to face the monument for its unveiling, and John felt Gordon's hand gently guiding his shoulder to move. It felt good to have that caring paternal presence in his life, John thought as he watched a group of schoolchildren tug on the red drape that covered the monument. The drape fell away to reveal a large plaque covered with the names of all those believed to be resting on the river bottom and graced by a pair of somber angels.

Rather uninspired, John thought, but remembered that the people of Gotham were less concerned about the memories of these victims than their wandering remains. Not all of Bane's actions were completely unappreciated, as John knew that many of the law-abiding citizens in the city today had enjoyed the spoils that were once these dead men's riches. But like possessed bacchants the day after the drunken orgy, these Gothamites had returned to what was left of their previous lives as if none of them could be held to shame for the madness.

More applause and camera flashes signaled the end of the affair and the officers on display began filing off the platform. John and Gordon did not need to share with one another their identical intentions- to quickly disappear from the hoopla to the privacy of the car. Unfortunately, Gordon high-profile status as Gotham's only surviving hero made this impossible. They were stopped by an eager young reporter who all but threw herself in front of them.

“Excuse me, Commissioner Gordon. Did the Harvey Dent scandal in any way influence the mayor's decision not to have you speak at today's event?”

Gordon stopped dead in his tracks and looked as if someone had just insulted his mother. Even John, who was closer to Gordon than anyone these days, knew to avoid this topic.

“My decision to decline the mayor's offer to speak at today's memorial was out of respect for the victims themselves. As one of the few survivors of those that were made to go out on that ice, I thought it would be tasteless.” Gordon approached the young reporter, who took a step back in fear, and continued in a biting tone, “And to you miss, I will say that there is no Harvey Dent scandal. Dent was a good man whose name was publicly shamed by a deranged villain in order to discredit me and confuse the morals of the people of Gotham.”

Gordon turned to John with a look that expressed anger and shame and took his arm, maybe a little too hard. “Let's get out of here, son.” Perhaps Gordon was just like those hungover revelers of Gotham, desperate to forget the madness and brush everything under the carpet. 

The slam of the car door sealed the two men from the noise of the outside world. Gordon sighed deeply and closed his eyes.

“You understand, don't you Blake?”

John's silence was meant to let Gordon know that while he obviously did not understand why Gordon had decided to continue with the lies, he didn't feel particularly keen to judge. The two backpacks residing in John's closet were indelible proof that John could keep quite a few secrets himself.

“What do you think they would do to me if I admired to perjuring myself? Losing my job would be nothing. I would be facing time in Blackgate. And you can imagine how popular I am with the inmates there.”

Gordon had answered John as if he was responding to an accusation. Maybe Gordon was still trying to convince himself, John wondered.

“It's two o' clock, Commissioner, and we still have a full day of work. I think it's time we should be going.”

Gordon's lips trembled slightly as he started the car. The man had already lost his family because of his lies, and now John was all he had left. But it still wasn't his job to help Gordon excuse himself for being a liar. 

 

Blackgate Prison was delightfully refilling itself like a restaurant under new management, and Gordon was welcomed like the successful new maitre' d. Guards and inmates called out to him as he stormed through the the building, shouting their curses and congratulations. The heavy gate of the isolation unit rolled open as he and John approached, with the warden standing inside to take them downstairs.

“Your new rock star got a name yet? Or are we still calling him one-three-three-dash whatever?”

The warden was making a jocular reference to the more notorious inmates kept in isolation, like Joker, Scarecrow, and the mafia bigwigs-turned-rats that were safer being separated from their enemies. Gordon did not appreciate the joke.

“He ain't a rock star! I just thought you didn't want a guy that breaks handcuffs like they're made of plastic gallivanting around your general population!”

The doors slammed shut and the three men started to descend a worn staircase. Unfazed by Gordon's angry reply, the warden continued in a light-hearted fashion, “Well it's hard to imagine anyone being all that dangerous when they show up on a gurney, pissing themselves with their eyeballs rolled back in their head. But we did like you said. He's strapped down in his cell like he's the damn Hulk or something.”

The warden stopped them as they reached the bottom of the stairs and spoke in a low voice, “You know, I'm not even legally supposed to have him down here. You told me to call you when he woke up, and that's what I did. Now he's laying in there- a suspect, Jim-strapped to a bed and he hasn't even been read his rights. I trust you, Gordon, but I don't want to get tangled in some kind of a mess...”

“Don't worry Al, you did right. There are a lot of variables involved here, and we all just need to keep our heads and remember what our jobs are. When we're dealing with suspected terrorists the law is on our side. And all I'm asking you to do, Al, is to make sure that that suspect stays put.”

Gordon put a hand on John's shoulder and went on, “This is Detective Blake. From here on out, everything, absolutely everything having to do with suspect 133-8046 will be done through him. No one else goes to see that suspect, and anything he needs in connection with his investigations will be provided for him. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.” the warden said, signaling to the guards inside the second series of security gates to let them in.

“So if this is Blake,” the warden continued as they stepped inside, “then these are for you.”

He handed John two jewel cases containing some discs with scribbled marker on them.

“What are those?” Gordon asked curiously.

The warden responded before John could. “They came by special request with old piss pants. Apparently your young detective here has some special interest in rhinoplasty procedure. Those are the videotapes of 133-8046's surgeries. A whole ten hours worth. “

Gordon looked questioningly at John, who shrugged back at him. 

“Ten hours worth of surgery! I tell you, when I think of the things we spend our tax dollars on when you got mothers and kids digging in the trash just to eat...”

The warden rambled on as they moved down the hall of the isolation unit, past the silent cells holding men who had nothing but their thoughts to keep them company. It seemed almost cruel to John for the warden to converse so freely in front of these cells, reminding the men inside what it was like to see and talk to other people. Oh well, John reminded himself. They had made their choices. 

The warden stopped at a door with a packet of papers clipped to the side of it.

“What the hell are these?” Gordon said tearing them down. Looking over his shoulder, John could read a list of dates and other physical descriptions of the man inside. Gordon pushed the papers into John's hand and turned to the warden. “What is this, a pet store? You paste sensitive information to the door for any any potential buyer to look at?”

While the two older men continued to bicker at each other John took the opportunity to peek into the small rectangular window on the door. He felt his heart leap into his throat as soon as he saw the figure tied flat to one of the restraint beds that were used for lethal injections. Resourceful, if rather dark, John thought. He was not wearing the orange jumpsuit of typical of Blackgate inmates but still had a backless hospital gown with a wet spot on the front of his crotch. With bloody bandages covering his face, he presented a singular sight.

“He's urinated himself.” John spoke over the arguing men.

“Well, Gordon I see your still hiring only the best and the brightest for your detective division. Yeah kid, that's what I said before- he pissed himself on the way over from Gotham General. Weren't you listening?”

“Yes. I just assumed that since he's been here in your care for over three and a half hours someone would have changed him by now. Rather cruel, leaving a person like that, don't you think?”

“Whoa, hold on right there, kid. You heard your boss. I ain't having my boys touching him, moving him, feeding, changing him or even talking to him. Not after the stories I heard from the nurses about him almost ripping some idiot cop's arm off weeks ago when they first brought him in. Since then they've kept him drugged to the point that he can barely see straight. No way. If you wanna bathe him, dress him up and play paddy-cake or whatever with him, he's all yours. Be my guest.”

“All right Al, that's enough.” Gordon stopped the embarrassing tirade, much to John's relief. 

“Excuse me, sir,” John forced out, “I spoke too soon. I realize the safety of your officers should always be your priority, but with maximum security protocols in a facility like this you should be able to avoid any such instances as may have been reported to you from the hospital. And we do have a responsibility to treat inmates, even terrorist suspects, humanely. Sir.”

The warden frowned, seemingly embarrassed as well and eager to change the subject.

“Anyway, I hope you two gentlemen didn't get your hopes up because today's going to be a pretty dull interview. He can't talk. And he won't be able to for another two-and-a-half weeks. Hell, we don't know who he is and there's still a chance that he don't know who he is either. He's been doped up, in and out of surgery since they brought him to the hospital. It's probably just now dawning on him that he's still alive, and he's wondering where he is. But we can at least welcome him to his new home.”

The warden whistled in the direction of the security gates and two officers approached, one carrying a ring of average-looking keys. He inserted one key into the lock and then another signal from the warden told the remaining officers at the gate to release the magnetic bolts. The door swung open to the sound of a deafening alarm, and the three men entered the cell quickly so that the door could be shut again. The relief of the silence lasted only a moment though, as John realized there was nothing also for him to do but approach the gurney.

He had imagined this moment everyday for the last three weeks and now that it was really happening he had no idea what to do. Fear and anticipation filled him as he walked forward, annoyed with the two older men who seemed determined to remain a step behind. 

At his bedside Bane turned his eyes on John- not with the wrath or wildness of that first time, but with a calm intelligence that was disarming. John was struck at the same time by the clarity and brightness in Bane's blue eyes that indicated just how aware he was of himself and his surroundings. How can a man wake up to such a nightmare- defeated, despised, tied to an execution chair, and covered head to foot in horrific injury, and sit so serenely like that?

Bane turned his eyes away with what seemed to John to be a mixture of boredom and disgust, but John continued to gaze at the prone figure in admiration. He noticed stubble growing in on the scalp and could discern a golden reflection. Blonde, or at least lighter than his own color. Strange, John mused.

The three men stood wordlessly over the gurney for several seconds and listened to the inmate's labored breathing through the bandages until a nudge from Gordon woke John from his thoughts and he cleared his throat:

“Good Morning and welcome to Blackgate Prison. Inmate 133-8046, which is the only label we have to give you at this time, I am here to inform you of your rights, or as the case may be, your lack thereof. Being suspected of international terrorism in connection with the attack and occupation of Gotham City, we have the right, under United States law, to hold you here as an inmate in isolation as long as we deem necessary for security and investigative purposes, without legal counsel. You have been treated for injury at Gotham General hospital and will continue to receive medical treatment as necessary to your recovery. “

John hesitated for moment, apprehensive about his next words.

“If, at this time, you feel that identifying yourself and the country of your origin would benefit our investigation or release you from suspicion, I can give you writing materials to do so and we will contact the appropriate embassy...”

The inmate didn't move an inch, or even blink in response. John continued:

“In that case, we continue under the assumption that you are, or were, an active member of the terrorist organization known as the League of Shadows and your case will be handled as such. Once you have recovered your ability to speak, we will begin questioning, and based on the progress we reach during that phase, your options will be reconsidered.”

John had completed the rote portion of his speech, but felt somehow unsatisfied, and he thought maybe a little personal touch wouldn't hurt.

“My name is Detective John Blake.”At these words, Bane turned his eyes back to him, and even though they were filled only with cold indignity, John felt satisfied to have their attention again. He continued, “I will personally be handling this case, and any questions you have about your future or your rights can be directed to me. In a few weeks, I will be returning here to begin the questioning myself, so...”

“Wait, what?” The warden broke in.

Gordon let out a small groan and tapped John's shoulder, “Look, you'll be seeing him a lot sooner than that, but... we'll talk about that later...” 

“Jim, I thought we talked about this...”

“It's all right Al!”

“Hey... guys, what's this all about?”

“Just uhh,.. let's finish up here. We'll talk later.”

John looked back at the man on the gurney, trying to remember what he had been saying. There was a strange glint in his eyes now, that thrilled John. With all that should be on his mind, he still enjoyed watching the confusion and fumbling of his captors. It was intimidating.

“I guess that's everything. Thank you for your time.”

 

“'Thank you for your time.' That was classic, John. I gotta remember that one next time _I'm_ talking to prisoner strapped to a gurney.” Gordon, correctly perceiving John's dislike for the warden, saved his teasing for when they were finally alone in the car.

John frowned, yanking on the jammed passenger seatbelt in Gordon's sedan, which had been broken for a while, much to John's irritation.

“Do you want me to pay to have this thing replaced? It can be your Father's Day present from me.”

Gordon stopped him. “Don't worry about it son. We're only going up the street, over to Gotham General.” He said, lighting a cigarette.

“The hospital? Why?”

“For your training.”

“My _training_? Wait. Does this have anything to do with whatever the hell you and the warden were talking about in that cell?”

Gordon exhaled a cloud of smoke and turned in his seat to face John. The supplicating look on his face made John anxious about what was coming out of his mouth next.

“As you know, John, we don't want anybody spending a lot of time with that prisoner, and lucky for us, that incident with you at the hospital means no one is really itching to anyway. In order to get him released from the hospital and off the sedative, I had to say that I had someone to treat him besides the medical team here, who won't touch him. Y'know when your police commissioner you can pull a few strings...”

Gordon's voice trailed off as he made a gesture like a wheel turning. Taking a long drag off his cigarette, he raised his eyebrows at John as if he was expecting something. John just stared back, his mind blank. Gordon sighed, blowing more smoke into the car.

“John, have you ever heard of something called Stockholm Syndrome? It happens when hostages or captives begin to sympathize with the people that are holding them, like they think there's a bond between them. It's weird, but psychologists think it has something to do with how when you depend on someone, like to live, someone who could kill you but doesn't, they even feed you, and take care of you, well, you see them as being a savior rather than what they really are. You trust them. Like with a pet, or a farm animal. Kind of.”

“Why are you telling me this?” 

John's mind was not allowing himself to understand where Gordon was going with this. Gordon had feared this, and decided that maybe it was time to go with plan b, the straightforward approach.

“Because after today, your the only one going in that cell. I already arranged for the nurses at Gotham General to instruct you on your care-taking duties for 133-8046's recovery. We're supposed to be there five minutes ago.”

John was stunned. 

As Gordon started the engine, John screamed, “Wait! No fucking way. I'm a cop, not a candy striper. I thought you needed me as a detective, not a personal attendant for fucking Bane.” 

Gordon cut the engine and quickly glanced in th rear view mirror to see if any one was around, then leaned over to get right in John's face.

“Stop using that fucking name!” Then in a forced whisper he continued, “ _Bane is dead._ That man up there is nameless, faceless. Quite literally. The sooner you get that idea into your head, the better.”

Gordon sat back, trying to relax himself, and went on.

“I can see you're angry, and I understand why, believe me. But try to imagine what I'm thinking. You will be the one who feeds him, tends his wounds, talks to him, listens to him; you'll be his only link to the outside world. He will come to depend on you, wait for you, need you, trust you, maybe _even love you_. His life will revolve around you. For you, he will talk.”

John stayed quiet for several minutes, and Gordon let him. The part of John that wanted to protest more was silenced by the more honest part of him that knew it was all bullshit. John was more of a candy striper than a cop, and what he was really feeling was plain old fear and insecurity.

“Why me, Jim? Of all the cops, dicks, and prosecutors in Gotham that would have loved a crack at this, why did you bring me back for this? What makes you think I can get through to him?”

Now it was Gordon's turn to take his time responding. He let the ash on his cigarette grow long as he meditated, then replied in a dramatic tone.

“Because you're innocent. You believe in things with your heart and you live by those beliefs. He would see through anyone else, but in you, he will see...”

Gordon flicked the cigarette away angrily, and with it the willingness to express himself with caution.

“Look, I know you think I sound stupid, and I can see that you're laughing, but you don't realize that the rest of us don't have that- I don't know- purity. That's for madmen and saints. We, the rest of us I mean, we get confused, we change our minds and we doubt ourselves and everyone else. _We get weak._ Then we give up and become jaded. But not you. You stay true, and believe in your ideals with a passion that the rest of us cowards call stupid or insane. You think he is impenetrable, but so are you. He would see through anyone else, but in you he will see himself.”


	3. Chapter 3

It was obvious from a distance that the light rainstorm gracing the evening had put the electricity out on John's block. Again.

“You need a flashlight?”

“No, my phone is bright enough.”

“Well if you see one back there, help yourself,” he bent forward to pull a small lever between his legs that popped the trunk lock. “You gotta get your little nurse box anyway.”

John gave him a look and opened his door.

“Hey don't forget you movies!” Gordon held up the jewel cases, “Why'd you ask for these things anyway?”

“Don't know, curious.”

“You know they wouldn't have given those to you if they didn't think it was for your training...”

“Yeah I see that now and that reminds me- I'd really appreciate if you could avoid making me the last to know next time you make a major decision in my life.”

"I'm sorry, kid. Just waiting for the right moment, I guess. Never came.”

John grabbed the jewel cases and ran around to the back of the sedan. A little blue Rubbermaid box sat nestled between Gordon's shotgun and a very serious-looking flashlight. He picked up the box and slammed the trunk, then walked around to the driver's window to wave goodbye to Gordon.

“Hey no lolly-gagging! Your boyfriend 's waiting for you.”

Instead of a wave he gave the old man the finger. They both laughed, and it felt good to know that their relationship was close enough for them to tease each other like that.

He could have done without the boyfriend comment, though.

 

Shining his phone on the steps in front of him, John jogged quickly up the sixteen flights of stairs to his floor. A cacophony of excited voices filled the hallway, as it seemed that every one of his neighbors had opened their doors to share with one another the novelty of darkness. Families scrambled to locate lanterns, candles, and flashlights, and John believed he could hear in each voice a grateful joy. He was treated to a not-so-distant memory at St. Swithin's: an ice storm had knocked out the power and Fr. Riley had all the boys sleep on the floor of the greatroom by the huge fireplace. John and several others stayed up all night, horsing around and enjoying the last remnants of their short childhood.

That this happy memory had been able to invade John's thoughts was a sure sign that his mood had vastly improved since the argument in Blackgate's parking lot. The nurses and 133-8046's surgeon had treated John like a national hero or a kamikaze pilot on a top-secret mission; their reverence, trust, and patience erasing every one of John's misgivings about the seemingly half-baked plot that Gordon had cooked up and thrown in his lap.

“Someone's gotta do it. I guess we can only thank God he made men like you who are willing.”

John had smiled humbly when the Snoopy-clad nurse had spoken these words to him and tried to contain the pride bursting inside of him. Even Gordon squeezed his neck lovingly, as if he had forgotten about the game they were playing. 

After a sufficient amount of ego-stroking, it was time for John's crash course. The first thing they had gone over was the feeding. He was given a nasogastric tube, a bag, and a small amount of solution. 

“For the first few days at least, you're gonna have to feed him this way.”

He watched the nurses demonstrate on a teenage girl in the same ICU where he had first seen Bane. Her jaw was wired shut and she coughed until her eyes watered as they shoved the tubing into her body. Her eyes never left John, and he wondered if Bane would watch him with the same vulnerable and pleading stare.

The Australian surgeon came to speak to him with the doctor he remembered from weeks before. They were impressed with John's new responsibilities as well as his request for the the recordings.

“As you saw, I'm sure, the procedures were quite arduous and lengthy. They needn't have been so, honestly, but I thought it was a great oppurtunity to experiment with some options that are new to the field, and still considered somewhat experimental. All things considered, the results are quite splendid, if I do say so myself...”

He looked to John for a sign of approval, and John gratefully obliged him with a charming smile, being flattered to have a surgeon after his respect. The surgeon continued, happy to recount his triumph to the young detective.

“You see, the current trend is to take the largest whole section of epidermis available and graft it onto the treated area, assuming that the number of visible scars is the patient's main concern. Unfortunately, these patients often complain later that they feel like they're wearing a mask because these large sections never properly bond with the nerves they are attached to and usually respond poorly to them. In fact, most patients say that they would rather be sporting a badly scarred face that looked and felt natural. But this is only ever after the fact. So I...”

Here the surgeon cleared his throat and threw the doctor a bizarrely mischievous look:

“...I went ahead and took advantage of the fact that this patient was unable to express his preference, and performed the surgery that I chose for him. Using x-rays of his skeletal structure and musculature we tried to reconstruct his appearance as it would have been if not for the disfigurement. We used small sections of epidermis from various points on his body, leaving, unfortunately for you sir, several more wounds that you will be caring for. Apologies. I also chose to take advantage of one of Gotham General's greatest resources-cadavers; I used several of them as well to piece together 133's new face. The result is a patchwork that may result in heavy scarring and keloid reactions, but will still be remarkably flexible and comfortable for him and for those who he interacts with. And for fun, you can ask him how well I did on matching his features. Seems he was quite a handsome bloke, actually. Bit like yourself.”

The flirtatious surgeon must have loved the flush he raised on John's cheek with these words, but he would never have guessed that John was only reacting to the mention of his patient's attractiveness. He was distracted for only a moment before another demonstration, even more heart-wrenching than the last and involving a victim of Gotham's bombings, was given him for the care of wounds.

Inside the Rubbermaid box were examples of all the materials he would need to nurse his patient back to health, along with instructions. Of course the hospital and medical team at Blackgate were there to provide him with anything else he needed, but the box made him feel as adequately equipped as a doctor giving house calls. He was even advised on how to lead a few physical therapy exercises, which would apparently be very beneficial for his patient's spine, which had also been operated on. Instructions for those had been written by hand on some yellow notebook paper by the Snoopy nurse. She had hugged him warmly and even offered her cell phone number if John ever felt unsure about any of his duties.

He unlocked the door and stepped into his apartment, walking straight to the bedroom and setting the beloved box on what felt like his dresser. He had only wanted to change, shower maybe, and grab a bite to eat, but the thought of his suffering patient waiting for him completely killed his appetite. He felt like the child who finds a baby robin that has fallen out of his nest. Maybe just change out of this suit into something more comfortable...

As he was opening his closet his toe caught on something and he crashed onto his bed, banging his shin on the sideboard. After a few exclamatory curses he sat up and shined the phone onto the floor where he tripped. His heart sank from its exalted heights as he looked upon the green backpack that had betokened the change of direction his life had taken over the past few weeks. It never stayed hidden deep in the closet where he had promised himself to leave it; he pored over contents so frequently that the side of John's bed had become its home, while the mask itself rested by his pillow like a teddy bear. 

About a week ago, he had decided to keep the mask in a zip-lock bag to preserve the fading scent inside. He no longer noticed the reek of the bag, and whether it was because it too had faded or because it now permeated his bedroom, he couldn't tell. 

At moments he was vaguely aware that someone else might find this behavior disturbing. But since he found more comfort in the contents of the bag then he did from the people who would judge him, and the duplicity he had learned from Gordon was becoming second nature to him, these habits continued, and were self-excused as peculiar but harmless 'adjustment tools.'

But who was he really kidding? It was sick and needed to stop. He imagined what the Snoopy nurse and the surgeon was say if they knew what he was hiding.

He made a compromise. He snapped the bag open carefully, as if he was scared of someone hearing or seeing him. With the same care he gently tugged the beloved mask out of the zip-lock. He did not have the time to put it on, much as he wanted to, but lifted it to his face and grasped the subtle fragrance he craved. Then he slipped it back in its container with a guilty sigh. It was time to stop this, he knew. Get rid of it. People get themselves on reality shows for less than this, he warned himself.

As he pressed the bag to his chest to remove the air inside (doing this helped preserve the scent) he hunched over to give it a loving embrace. At this moment, the lights flickered and came back on, to the sound of the beeping smoke alarm. The backpack lay open on the floor beside him, the contents spilling out from when he tripped on the strap. He had also baggied up the scrap metal, papers and dirty rags contained within, and kept a notebook filled with his theories about the purpose and history of these items, made from a combination of internet research and imagination. He enjoyed nothing more than laying in bed with the mask on, pondering his collection and dreaming up stories revolving around Bane's use of each item....

The bag had to go _tonight_. He tossed the mask and all the baggies inside and zipped it up roughly, wanting to treat it like a rejected lover. Remembering that he had forgotten to close up the mask's bag, he began to reopen the satchel but stopped himself. _It doesn't matter, John._ He closed pack and stood up to change. 

While pulling a t-shirt over his head he realized with no small measure of relief that he had no time to seek a spot to get rid of the bag. It would have to stay. But it would definitely go back in the closet. For good.

Behind some shoe boxes and a box of sports cards was a small empty hole. As he knelt down on his knees to jam the backpack inside, he caught a glimpse of something he had nearly forgot about- a tidy black duffel bag. He froze, angry at himself for being surprised to see the thing. 

Memories of Bruce Wayne filled his mind. And something else- not a memory but an image. Batman's last moments, dragging a bomb behind him and about to die for a city that he believed was safe in the hands of a new vigilante. The thought of himself being in Bruce's last thoughts made John feel sick.

The world went dark around him. I'm a liar, he thought. And a coward. Bruce had given him the chance to become the hero he had always worshiped, and he had failed him. And why? To play nurse to the city's worst antagonist.

He couldn't let himself think about this now. He slid the green backpack in its new home with the duffel bag and slammed that side of the closet shut. He changed, full of anger and the stress you feel when you're avoiding thoughts like they're members of an opposing soccer team. Still pissed, he grabbed his box and walked to the front door. As he opened it, he remembered something: the baggie around his mask was still open. He was twisting his key in the lock as this reality struck him.

It didn't matter.

But it did.

Quick as lightning and as blank with thought, he rushed back into his apartment, dove into his closet, and reached into his green backpack. The baggie was shut tight and he was back at the keyhole in less than thirty seconds.

 

“What do you mean the warden's already gone home?”

“It's almost nine o'clock, bro,” the chubby guard paused for his grey-haired comrade to laugh, “your boy's been hanging on that gurney looking like friggin' Hannibal Lecter for like, six hours while we all been waitin' on you. But don't worry, I was left with instructions.”

While the guard pulled a manilla envelope out of his desk, John was treated to his partner's continued laughter. John could never understand what hardened men who worked jobs like theirs, but knowing they were not malicious in any way meant that he was never really offended by them either. He was just going to have to use his sense of humor to deal with these guys on a daily basis.

“This here is your key.” He held up the uncannily average-looking key he remembered from before.

“Don't lose it.” This earned another chuckle from his partner, and John had to laugh as well.

“I buzz you in the unit. At the door, I buzz you in the cell. You have three seconds to open the door and shut it again after I hit the buzzer. Inside there is a camera, so don't worry sweetheart, I got my eye on you. The thing don't have sound, so don't embarrass yourself screaming. No firearms will be permitted inside the cell, so if he approaches you in a way I don't like, my orders are to respond immediately by firing on him at the door of the cell, and to aim to kill. I suggest you explain this to him before unstrapping him- that if he does anything stupid, or even anything that even looks stupid to me, he dies. I hope for everybody's sake, the motherfucker speaks English. Warden said there was like, zero response when you were talking to him earlier.”

From this John gathered that the warden was about as perceptive and discreet as one would have suspected.

After another pause to allow his one man audience to digest his brilliance and laugh in response, the guard went on.

“So.... although I can't ask to inspect the items in your possession, (special orders from the commissioner) I still gotta ask you to check your weapon in.”

“I don't carry a weapon.”

The guard widened his eyes and then shrugged, “OK, go on in.”

John was surprised that he didn't press the issue, or attempt to search him. Well, at least he had their trust, John thought. Respect on the other hand...

“Oh yeah and detective?” It was the older guard who finally spoke. “Thank you for your time.”

He would have to live without that.

Their hysterical laughter was drowned out by the deafening tone that sounded as he stepped into the unit, holding his plastic box in one hand and the envelope in the other. At the end of the hall, he awkwardly dropped the key out of the envelope onto his box, then stuck the envelope in his mouth to free his hand for it. He pushed it inside the lock and then turned his head to signal to the guards. Of course he looked ridiculous, and gave the guards one last riotous laugh as they released the lock. He twisted the key, pushed against the heavy door, and twirled around once he was inside the cell to lay the door against the jamb. Instantly the door was locked rigidly into place with a magnetic thump that echoed against the walls of the empty room.

The sound of it brought him back to the somber state of mind he had been in before being hassled by the playful guards. Strangely enough, John's initial concern was to find somewhere to set his box and envelope, but there was only the toilet and the sink standing against the wall. As he walked over and placed his items inside the sink, he noticed the camera conspicuously located above, its red light flickering steadily. 

Being aware of the two pairs of eyes watching from behind the blinking sentinel, he walked up to the restraint bed as nonchalantly as possible. Quickly though, he realized something was terribly wrong- the patient's foot and thigh were twitching in painful-looking spasms, and his right arm was twisting and squirming in its leather strap. The thick chest, also banded with two wide straps, was laboring with short, unsteady breaths so different from the deep, healthy ones that had made such an impression on John at the hospital. The urine stain on the hospital frock was dried but the gown was now stickily moist with an even layer of sweat. Leaning over to look into his patient's face, John saw the worst of it- the forehead was flushed with strain and the previously calm, intelligent eyes were wracked with a painful delirium. John had heard of eyeballs rolling in their sockets but had never seen it until now. 

This was all his fault, he thought. A helpless man who had only one person in the world to depend on was suffering, maybe dying while John was doing what? Fucking around in his apartment? 

John could feel the physical effects of bitter shame warming his cheeks as he recklessly tore the straps apart, forgetting the warning he was to give before freeing the prisoner from the bed. The prisoner, though, could not have appeared less dangerous as he rose his released right arm to his chest only to cradle it in a gesture of agony. John tried to slightly move the arm above one of the chest straps it was covering so he could undo the buckle, but the arm's resistance reminded him of the strength it contained. Then, as if the patient realized that someone was trying to help him, he relaxed his arm and lifted his head slightly to see who this savior could be. His eyes met with John's and they held each others gaze for only a second before the patient's head came slamming back down on the hard bed.

What was the problem and what could he do about it? He let his mind go blank for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to wash away the anxiety that was clouding his thoughts. The image of the mask flashed in his brain in combination with the taste of morphine. Suddenly everything came together: this was withdrawal. 

John rushed to the sink and tore the lid off his blue box. Then, thrusting his hand inside and scattering the carefully organized contents, he found a disposable syringe, ripped open its bag, and removed the cap without thinking. Slow down, he thought. He replaced the cap and set it on the sink, then drew out the amber vial of morphine sulfate and antiseptic wipes. He closed his eyes to check in with the Snoopy nurse of his memory:

“Twenty milligrams should enough for a man of his size, even with a tolerance.” Then lowering her voice, “we were ordered to drug him to unconsciousness, and monitor his vitals. Probably unethical, but I did it for the commissioner. At the end, it was taking over _ninety milligrams_ to keep him under, enough to kill any man and his family, too. So, you'll have to use your judgment when it comes to just pain. And remember, with a solution this concentrated, go slowly, unless you want an overdose on your hands.”

He popped the caps off the vial and needle, feeling all the time that he was missing a step. He inserted the needle into the vial and pulled the plunger back until the barrel was halfway full, or about forty milligrams. Might be enough, he thought, but out of guilt for the baby robin he left to suffer, he sucked another twenty or so in the barrel. Syringe and alcohol wipes ready, he walked over to the bed.

“Can you hear me?” 

The prisoner could only squint in response, as if telling him that an effort to look at him was all he could do.

It was enough.

“I'm about to administer morphine to you through a simple syringe. We will have to do this very, very slowly, so I need you to be as still as you can for about three to four minutes. Can you do this for me?”

To himself, he sounded like a school nurse, but the patient lifted his eyebrows in response and the eyes filled with a mix of need and reluctant trust like a feral cat waiting for a food dish to be filled.

Now the hard part.

He laid the heavy arm open, elbow down, and looked at the inside of the limb where he was relieved to see fat purple veins standing naked and exposed in front of him. Since it was difficult for the patient to relax the tensing muscles of his afflicted body, John bent over, placing his own elbow in the patient's hand and putting his weight on it to steady himself and still the arm. He rubbed the selected area with the wet cotton, satisfied when the alcohol sting reached his nostrils His left hand framed the area chosen for injecting the needle, and John proceeded, nervous as hell. 

The sharp needle slid easily beneath the skin and John felt a tiny pop when it broke the resistance of the vein. He was there. With the least amount of pressure, his thumb pushed a small bit of the fluid into the patient's bloodstream. Afraid to move in order to get his phone out and use it as a stopwatch, he opted for the one-mississippi-two-mississippi method, counting seconds in his head. When he reached sixty, he pushed the plunger to the next mark of the barrel, allowing another milliliter of fluid into the vein. 

The morphine was beginning to take effect, as John felt the arm and hand completely relax, and watched the chest rise high in deep, grateful breaths. John responded in kind, exhaling deeply. The agony was smoothed away from the few visible features of the patient's face, and as John pondered the handsomeness left behind in it, he accidentally lost count of his mississippis. Guessing that a bear-sized man like this could probably handle it, (especially with a morphine tolerance that would knock the socks off of the likes of Howard Hughes) John plowed the rest of the barrel into the vein, then pulled out the needle and swathed the red little dot with cotton. After dressing the wound with a tiny band-aid, he admired it as the smallest among countless others.

It was a job well done. Now for the next step- changing the facial bandages and checking the mouth for swelling. John began turning to walk back over to his box when he felt a warm hand on his arm just above the wrist. He flinched instinctively, but the loose grip was not threatening. Still concerned about how this would appear to the watching guards, he stepped closer to hide their joined limbs from the camera. His eyes met again with a pair of sleepy, almost childishly tender blue eyes.

“wwwhh...what's up?” John replied clumsily, his voice cracking.

The hand floppily dropped from John's arm, one finger vaguely pointing in the direction of John's box sitting on the sink below the camera. Was he trying to tell John something? Or was it just the morphine talking? Was he hungry? Thirsty?

John, lost as to what this could mean, and seeing that his patient was having trouble keeping his eyelids open anyway, decided to quietly continue with his tasks, and again turned to walk away.

But again he was stopped by the warm hand, this time with more pressure. John was struck by the fierce reflex that seemed to be aware even when the mind was not. The patient again pointed to the same corner of the room, more determined this time, where stood the toilet, the sink, and the box. A rough growl emitted from the bandages of his face, catching John off-guard when his patient had previously been so silent. Then the enormous body attempted to rise, but was caught on the strap that remained fastened to his left arm.

“Whoa, whoa, hold it there!” John ran to the other side of the bed, undoing the strap buckle but not sure if this is what he should be doing. He needed to take control of himself and the situation, he reminded himself. After releasing the strap he laid his hand on the prisoner's shoulder as if he was holding him in place and spoke in the firmest tone he could muster:

“I am here to help you in whatever way I can, but I need to warn you about taking liberties like just reaching out to grab my arm. I'm telling you now that behind that camera,” he pointed straight to the the blinking light, but the patient neither turned his head nor took his eyes off John, “behind that camera are two guards with orders to come in here and shoot-to-kill first and ask questions later if they think I am in any kind of danger. This means that any misinterpreted action could be your death sentence. So keep your hands to yourself.”

In what was possibly be the most unexpected response John could have imagined to his tirade, the patient flopped his left hand down on top of his crotch, and for the third time pointed to the same wall. This cleared things up, and John felt stupid and cruel.

“You need to use the toilet?” John whispered, as if he was talking to a little boy.

Bane nodded, closing his eyes as if relieved that he finally got his point across.

“And you want _my_ help?” Bane continued to nod as John put his hands out to brace the drowsy patient as he raised himself into a sitting position.

John was very little help, or at least that was how he felt. The patient's large hands engulfed John's and he almost threw the smaller man off balance as he pulled himself up, groaning and looking like a mummy rising out of a casket with his gauze-wrapped face. His body slouched forward sluggishly and dropped his heavy head in John's arms. The intimacy of the strange embrace made John uncomfortable, so he tried to shake his patient out of the lull in which he had sunk.

“C'mon man, let's go. Head up. Let's get your legs over the side and then we can stand up.”

The patient lifted his head with another deep moan and looked down at his bare feet. Noticing them for the first time, John saw that they were proportionately monstrous things. The drugged man knitted his eyebrows, apparently focusing on the calloused toes, but only a few of them twitched in response. John could see that some assistance was needed, so he grabbed one leg, tugging and then tossing it off the bed. The patient howled in response, an otherworldly sound that brought John back into a panicked state. Looking at the inside of both his patient's spread legs, John noticed the huge matching wounds left from the donor skin removed for his facial graft. 

Fuck, John had been told about. He winced as he imagined the pain he had caused out of carelessness. He may even have torn a few stitches and made a mental note to check them before he left for the night. His patient was taking one gigantic breath after another, trying to wash away the pain.

“Hey man, I'm sorry, just, yeah, I'm sorry. I'll be more careful next time.”

John wrapped his hands around the other leg and lifted gently, and although he could feel the muscles tense in an effort to cooperate, to John it might as well have been dead weight. Moving the leg meant shifting the entire body, and John was gritting his teeth against the strain. Finally though, both legs lay over the side of the bed, and John prepared himself for the next ordeal-getting the giant on his feet.

“OK, your going to have to like, scoot down 'til your feet get to the ground.” John panted, not sure if this was the kind of man that had 'scoot' in his vocabulary.

He obeyed, but only after placing his over-sized paws on John's shoulders, and using them as support while he inched his legs off the bed. Finally his toes made contact with the cold floor, and him and John both exchanged assuring glances as they prepared to stand him up.

John was not as ready as he thought he was. Completely unaware of himself, the patient pushed down on John with the full weight of his body, which caused John's knees to buckle so that he had to push them both forward onto the bed to avoid crashing to the floor. John rolled around to the patient's left side and wrapped the arm around his neck, burying himself in his armpit and wrapping his own arm around the patient's back.

Although they were now positioned for their six-foot journey to the toilet, John could see that his partner's legs were not steady, and the way he hung his head had John worried that the morphine had made him nauseous; he still had his jaw wired shut and if he puked things could get real ugly.

“You need to throw up?” John said indecorously, still panting.

The sluggard shook his head in response, and John, who was almost overwhelmed by the weight on his back even while leaning against the bed, felt that they should get on with it before he was completely spent and dropped his patient in the middle of the operation.

“OK, you ready?”

The cumbersome beast seemed reluctant, unresponsive and was still leaning all his weight on John and the bed, and John had to remind himself that this was the first time he had been standing in over a month. Oh yeah, and John had pumped a ridiculous amount of morphine into him. Probably a bad idea. Eventually, the patient pushed himself off the bed and attempted to balance himself on his feet, causing John to hold his breath for fear that if he lost it he would take John down with him.

The first step was like each one after it: barely a success. John kept his feet planted far apart and gritted his teeth each time the burden in his arms shifted its colossal weight from foot to foot. When they reached the toilet and the patient put his free arm against the wall, John felt like saying a prayer of thanks. He carefully guided the arm that was around his shoulder to the wall as well, and ducked beneath the shoulder to free himself. As soon as he took his hands off of the man though, he faltered, and John barely caught him from behind as his knees gave out. His patient struggled to regain control, but the trembling in all four of his limbs told John that he could not let go.

This was about the time that John realized the amount of male nudity that he had pressed against his body. The hospital gown was not sized with gargantuan men like this in mind and it barely reached below the groin in front and left the back completely exposed, so that the entire back and giant bare ass was pushed right into John's abdomen with only an old, thin Gotham Rogues t-shirt between the two men. The patient was positioned over the toilet, dividing his weight between his arms, legs, and the poor being behind him. There was no question of him using one of his hands to hold onto his dick, and frankly John didn't care.

“Just go.” John forced out between his teeth.

The two men stood there another minute without anything happening. The patient growled in frustration and laid his head against the wall. The trembling limbs meant that he could not expect to be standing much longer, but there was no sign that he was going to take care of the business at hand, either.

“Do you need me to help you with something?” John asked impatiently, and received another beseeching moan in response. 

He was given no more of a clue than this but intuition told him that whatever he needed to do, it would require crossing a line John never thought he would have to cross. Looking directly above, he noticed that the camera was angled over their heads, so that the present scene was not visible to the two guards, making the prospect of what he was about to do that much less horrifying. Before taking any great leaps though, John had to ask.

“You want me to hold it for you?” He softly asked into the sticky, unwashed back that his face was jammed into, sounding a little pervy to himself.

Bane nodded without hesitation and even began widening his legs clumsily and shakily, inviting John.

John reached around the gown and immediately realized what the missing step was that had been bothering him before administering the morphine-gloves. He should have had gloves on before he started doing any single thing. Well, it was too late now.

Still supporting Bane with his left arm, he used his right hand to reach underneath the short gown, still not believing that he was about to touch another man's penis with his bare hand. He felt the moist fleshy mass nestled between the scruffy pubic hair he had seen before. He had to discern what he was feeling, and forced his mind to focus. He brushed the hairy testicles with his finger tips accidentally before he got his hands comfortably around the flaccid prick, still sheathed in its foreskin.

Strangely, it was only fear and shame that he had to fight through, while disgust seemed miles away. Expecting a monstrous bull's cock, he was surprised to find something so familiar beneath the gown, a rather ordinarily-sized, vulnerable penis much like his own, except for its being uncut. He simply couldn't get the thought out of his mind of what someone would say if they saw him doing this. Especially without gloves. 

The patient was moaning with anticipation, and John could feel the hot urine rushing out even as he was still pulling back the skin. Strange, John thought, that a man like Bane should be concerned enough about spray or excess urine in his foreskin that he was willing to have another man's hands on his cock. The hot stream went on for what seemed like an eternity, and it struck John that he could actually _feel_ the piss coming out of him in way he had never noticed when holding his own prick, presumably because the experience was usually so, well, unremarkable. 

When the stream started to die, the patient grunted and tightened his abdominal muscles to empty more out of his bladder. Again, this all fascinated John, who himself had done this a million times but never cared. Finally the flow dribbled into nothing, and John shook the remaining drops with care and redrew his hand from the patient's prick. The relief seemed to have given the man strength, as he was now able to stand only bracing himself against the wall. John used the opportunity to straighten his back, resting his hands on the larger man's shoulders as he enjoyed the stretch.

Well, that's one way to break the ice, John thought, taking up his patient's arm to guide him back to the bed.


	4. Chapter 4

Jesus, what a genius, John said to himself, thinking of Gordon and his Stockholm Syndrome plot while he was brushing his teeth the next morning. When he had first broken the news to John outside Blackgate, John had thought that only one of two things could be true-Gordon was drunk, or he thought John was completely incompetent. Of course the creeping hidden part of him that slept in the mask was a little titillated at the prospect, but he wanted to meet Bane on equal terms, not as his nurse. Now though, after the revelations of his first night assisting Bane, or, 'his patient,' he saw the beauty of Gordon's thinking. He already shared a trust and rapport with the prisoner that would take years for most people to accomplish. He honestly looked forward to returning to the prison this morning, and was genuinely concerned about how his patient had passed the night, imagining the look of welcome he would be wearing when John arrived.

John walked over to his laptop on the bed, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, to see if Gordon had e-mailed him. One of 133's procedures was playing on the screen, and for a minute John was distracted by the delicate movements of a latex-gloved hand working at the base of his patient's spine. He had stayed up late the night before watching the operations that had caused the amazing changes he had seen in the prison cell, but still felt enthusiastic despite the lack of sleep. He minimized the window and brought up his mail, glad to see that Gordon wanted to meet at Blackgate after John had finished with 133. He was excited to tell Gordon about his new confidence and apologize for his previous lack of faith. Also, Gordon had said he would bring John all the information he could get on Bane's past and connections.

He emailed Gordon back, arranging a time that would give him a good four hours, hopefully enough time for to tend to his patient and run a few errands beforehand: he still needed to go over to Wal-mart to pick up a foam mattress, a shower attachment for the sink, and a hand-held mirror. 

John finished with is tooth-brushing and decided to make some coffee to take with him. As he watched it drip into the glass pot, his thoughts returned to the events of the previous night.

After the ordeal at the toilet, John had returned the invalid to his bed with about as much difficulty as could be imagined. It took maybe fifteen minutes to get the man laying down on his back, and afterward, as John was gasping to catch his breath, he swore to himself to never, ever again give the man his morphine before everything else was done.

First he decided to take a look at the inner thighs to see if he had caused any damage to the stitches. He gently spread the legs, feeling rather comfortable now with the man's genitals in his face. The smell, though, he was not so comfortable with. This was not a manly, or even an animal smell, this was like rotting meat. He had been aware of a negligible stink since he had walked in the room, but this was really awful and it was going to require more than baby wipes.

After lifting the tape edging the long bandage, John looked at the black track of stitching that ran the thigh's length. The patient's face had required a full-thickness graft, and the removal of the entire dermis had left a deep indentation there. The healing stitches were gooey and caked with scabs. The mess was described by the Snoopy nurse as signs of healthy recovery, but it made determining any signs of recent tearing difficult.

The patient quickly fell into a drugged sleep, snoring lightly, and John went about his business beginning with the employment of latex gloves. He wiped along the route of the long thigh stitches with alcohol, watching the wipes become filthy one after another. This method would work for one night, but he couldn't pretend to give this man decent care without bathing him properly. Returning to his box for more supplies, he noticed the drain in the tile floor by the toilet, and realized that with a nifty spray attachment, he could give his new friend a good hosing right there in the cell.

Taping the replacement bandages was frustrating; he hadn't the skill of whoever had done it first, and his bandages were too loose. He kept reapplying the tape until it became saturated with oil from the unwashed skin and lost its adhesive. He could have been there all night, readjusting and replacing tape, but eventually he gave up, wanting to save his patience for whatever else this body had in store for him.

It was the chest wound that Snoopy had emphasized as needing a lot of close attention; this was his most recent trauma, and although it was healing well enough, he was told to clean it thoroughly twice a day to avoid infection. He could see a darkened patch on the patient's clothed chest, indicating that the leakage had soaked through the cotton dressing and into the gown. Luckily, the garment was easy to push above the above the wound, not large enough to have gotten tucked beneath the body, and once again John was confronted with a heavy dose of nudity. This time, though, the guards were getting a show, too.

Eerily enough, the wound was exactly over the patient's heart. The dressing was hardened with dried discharge and made a funny sound when John scratched his finger on it. The tape had lifted up at the edges but the dressing, having fused to the the wound's crusty discharge, had remained in place. John poured the bottle of antiseptic straight over the wound, hoping to loosen it from the bandage. The cold liquid spilled over the patient's neck and into his armpit, causing his fingers to twitch slightly and his eyelids to flutter. He didn't wake up, but John wondered if he it had effected his dreams, whatever those could be.

The bandage lifted off and a new odor mixed with the alcohol. It seemed like the one described to him as normal and healthy, even if it was a little unpleasant. John used his gloved hand to pinch out globs of exudate that looked like cottage cheese, and then poured more antiseptic over the scored flesh, enjoying the way it caused the tissue to bubble on contact. When he was finished, he wiped the surrounding skin with alcohol before taping a new bandage, making it easy for him to apply the tape neatly and tightly. He made peace with himself then, happy to see such quick improvements in his nursing skills.

Before taking the gown back down, he glanced over the other smaller bruises and gashes that flared away from the main trauma. These were all armored with thick brown scabs that didn't need any attention. Curious, John lifted the gown higher, above the left armpit to see if there were any wounds there. On the shoulder, previously covered by the gown's short sleeve, he saw a large scab, bleeding slightly and leaking pink discharge. It was torn at the edge, and John knew this was from when he had carried the patient to the toilet.

He was tempted to feel guilty and sorry for himself, but realized he could hardly have avoided this even if he had been aware of the scab. 

“Whatever.” John whispered with a regretful sigh.

He wiped away the bloody discharge with a Q-tip and alcohol, then tugged the gown back down. It was getting late, and there was no way he was going to roll this beast over tonight to check on the spine incision, so he decided to go ahead with the face and mouth.

John slid off the bandage clip on the right cheek and began to unwrap the gauze, passing it from hand to hand behind the patient's neck. He lifted the head gently when it was required, taking his time and enjoying the suspense that was building as he came closer and closer to the flesh. Finally he saw the glistening surface and felt it clinging to the sticky flesh. John continued pulling tenderly, registering with each pass the features revealed to him. A perfectly triangular nose, with black stitches along the crevice was first, and then a pair of full, almost feminine lips, also edged with stitches like muddy lip liner. Eager to see the features come together as a complete face, he forced himself to move with patience, not wanting to damage the patient any more than he already had tonight. When he finally removed the last bit of gauze, he couldn't help but take a minute to admire the miraculous transformation. 

He recalled the horror he had felt looking down at the gurney three weeks before at Gotham General, and couldn't believe that he was now looking at the same man. The facial structure was symmetrical and square: masculine but balanced by the pretty nose and lips. He now wished his patient was awake so he could see how the new features tied together with the expressive and childlike blues eyes. If it wasn't for the jagged lines of stitching that traced awkward patterns along the cheeks or the greasy salve and discharge smeared among them, John would say that the the man was handsome indeed.

John went ahead with wiping up the gooey mixture, still in disbelief that such a pleasing face could be created on an operating table out of the nightmare it had once been. He used the rest of his cotton balls, and then dabbed the sutures with Vaseline as he had been instructed. It shined like gloss on the sensuous lips that had undoubtedly been re-appropriated from one of Bane's victims, John noted with irony. Then he carefully pushed his first two fingers through the opening and lifted the top lip to view the inside of the mouth. 

A thick silver track ran along both rows of immaculate porcelain teeth. Tightly stretched elastic bands were criss-crossed between them, holding the jaw firmly in place. John tucked his finger inside the cheek, running it along the webbed surface, feeling around for anything problematic. He knew they had used prosthetics to replace missing or damaged parts of the jaw, and could feel a few sutures where the face had been brought together. As nothing was out of place, he decided to re-wrap the face and conclude the night's events with a nice tube feeding.

The Vaseline was needed for this too, as he was to lubricate the tube as well as the inside of the nose where it would be inserted. As with the needle, he held his breath as he penetrated the sleeping body, pushing it in slowly as he watched for the sharpied mark on the tube that had been measured for 133. He was still working the tube along the back of the throat when the body convulsed, gagging on the tickle John had provided. John was startled by it, and remembered that he had been instructed to tell his patient to swallow if this happened. Strangely, the sleeping body began to swallow almost instinctively, and John watched the Adam's apple rise and fall as he continued to ease the tube inside. It probably was second nature to him, John thought, as this must be the only way he had been receiving nourishment for the last fifteen years.

With nothing in the cell to hang it on, John had to hold the bag of formula over the patient's head to allow gravity to do its work. Standing like that for ten minutes, John wondered what kind af a fool he must look like to the watching guards. Once the bag had emptied, he gently pulled the tube, trying to sneak it past the gag reflex. Once extracted, he held the end of it in his hand and was enchanted by the warmth it held from so deep inside the other man's body.

He was finished. 

After rinsing his tools and de-gloving himself, he prepared to leave the cell, giving one last look around to see if he had missed anything. The bed restraints lay open, and the guards had said nothing about if he were to secure the prisoner or not before leaving. Figuring it would be best if the man was free to move around and use the toilet, John left the restraints as they were.

Box and key in hand, John approached the door and pressed the a small button that informed the guards that he was ready to leave the cell. He waited several seconds and turned to wave at the camera, waiting to hear the loud buzz that would tell him to use his key. Nothing. John pressed the button again and looked out the small window in the cell's door to the partially visible guard booth, mildly concerned. All he could see was a pair of boots laying on the desk next to the computer monitor.

Shock and anger faded quickly into banal irritation as he pushed the button a third time. The idiot hyenas had both apparently fallen asleep soon after John had stopped entertaining them. 

There was movement in the booth, and John heard the ear-splitting buzz he was waiting for. He jammed his key into the lock and left the room, marching down the hall to the unit's exit. The chubby guard smiled sheepishly at him as he buzzed John out of the security gate, the older guard still sleeping beside him with his feet on the desk. John just rolled his eyes in response, saying nothing as he walked away.

Keeping his cool throughout the night's unexpected events had earned John a reward: he spent several hours watching surgery recordings in his darling mask. One image of Bane's fleshless skull being squeezed together in some kind of medieval-looking vice would have been jaw-dropping if not for the mask's restriction. As the skull was being crudely stapled on his computer screen, John realized something that should have been obvious long before- Bane had been living with his jaw tightly shut as long as he had been wearing the mask. Recalling his terrifying words from the steps of city hall, or his threats on the field of Gotham Stadium, John now understood the reason for Bane's peculiar and idiosyncratic speech patterns- he was enunciating through closed teeth.

So why, John asked himself, had he not spoken during their last two meetings, if the jaw-wiring made so little difference? Were his abilities effected, or was he just pretending? His image of the helpless patient crumbled and John was reminded that he was dealing with a dangerous, manipulative criminal that may be trying to play him. To Bane's knowledge, John had no idea who he was, and he might want to keep it that way. Contrary to Gordon's advice, maybe keeping Bane's name in his mind was a good way for John to keep his head and not fall into any traps.

John lifted the mask off and threw it on the bed, feeling slightly betrayed. He soothed his irritation by reminding himself that he still had quite the upper hand, and it was understandable that Bane should want to protect himself and his identity, knowing that his notoriously recognizable voice would immediately give him away and send him to a torture camp posthaste. John had planned on waiting to reveal to 133 that his identity was known (as a sort of ace in the hole) but now saw that it would be the only way to draw him out.

He made up his mind for a full disclosure the next day. He would continue to build Bane's trust through honesty and dependence, and help him see that his best, logical option was to give up everything he knew about the League of Shadows and its associates. He felt confident that he could protect Bane from execution and torture if he harvested the right information that led to arrests. With that self-assurance he laid his head to rest on his pillow, then curled his body around the mask and drifted to sleep.

Coffee sizzled on the hot plate, waking John from his replaying memories. After pouring it into a travel mug he jogged down the sixteen flights of stars and into the bright sunshine that reflected his optimism.

The cheerfulness did not survive his arrival at Wal-mart, a place he had always hated coming, which had taken a turn for the absurdly awful since its post-occupation reopening. The aisles were either empty or trashed, theft was rampant, and debris from one of the explosions made navigating the parking lot close to impossible.

“What do you think, would this be too harsh to use on a person?” John asked a young female employee, squeezing the handle of a dish washing sprayer, the closest thing they had to what John was looking for.

“What do you mean, like a baby?” The girl replied, looking at John suspiciously, like a man lurking around a playground with a butcher knife.

“No. Well, yeah, kinda. Not a baby, but gentle enough for a baby.”

“Sir, if you want me to show you to the childcare aisle we have a number of infant bathtub pro-”

“No, no, no. I just- I just wish I knew how high the pressure is on this thing. It's for a person. A hurt person.”

“Sir you _cannot_ wash your baby in the sink with that dish sprayer-”

“I'm not- Look, forget it, just- I'll take it OK?”

Full of resentment as he walked to his car, he cursed Wal-mart, wondering why Bane hadn't chosen this place to blow to bits instead of the water treatment center a half-mile away. Didn't Wal-mart represent everything shitty that Bane hated about the industrialized world?

John stopped himself in the middle of his ugly little storm. It was a dangerous path to start down, sympathizing with terrorist acts. John knew that this was exactly how most individuals begin their transition from good person to terrorist. He had to keep his hatred firmly focused on any act of unnecessary violence or cruelty, and turn from the tempting opiate of cynicism that many people used daily, especially if he was going to survive the challenge that Gordon had laid in his lap.

John was disappointed when he didn't see his two favorite guards in the booth, as he had prepared a sleeping beauty joke for them. Their nervous replacements were all business, one of them hanging up the phone with the words “he's here” when they saw John.

“Hey what's up guys?” John asked, not trying to hide his uneasiness. The day shift guards were younger than John and both looked like they had seen a ghost.

“Detective Blake. Good morning. We were about to contact you by phone. Your suspect, or, patient or whatever, inmate 133-8046, has been vandalizing his room and destroying prison property for the last hour-and-a-half. He seems to be emotionally unstable and well, just, thank God you're here. Warden says you're the only one allowed to go in there.”

John was buzzed into the unit with hands full of Wal-mart bags and his trusty box tucked beneath his arm, reorganized and restocked. He had the guards follow behind him, doing his best to seem calm and unconcerned. This became a challenge when he looked through the small window of the cell and saw why the guards refused to even approach the door.

John had assumed that maybe the bed was on its side, and the prisoner had done something stupid like shit in the middle of the floor. At first glance, he thought the bed had disappeared, and then noticed the small bits of debris strewn all over the place. He had torn it to bits, literal bits. All the walls of the cell that John could see were gouged and had strips of paint hanging off. The light fixtures on the ceiling were ripped open and some of the bulbs were flickering. Even the sink had taken a beating, John could see from the fractured basin and the porcelain dust beneath it. The man himself sat cross-legged in the center of the mess, hunched over and rocking himself in the most disturbing fashion. John could see the broad back heaving slightly, and it brought him a little comfort to know that the prisoner was at least human enough to be exhausted after such a rage.

“He's been throwing that restraint bed against the wall for over an hour, like I said, and screaming too. Got the other crazies going. They heard it all the way upstairs, and it's like insulated and everything. How's that bed look now?”

“It's uuh-yeah there's no bed in here anymore.”

“I guess that's why he stopped.”

“Yeah, probably.” John clapped his hands together and turned around to face the guards, wanting to lighten them up with a little joke.

“Well it's a good thing I brought him another bed! Yeah?”

They looked at him like he was crazy.

“Sir, how do you plan to go in there? Do you want a taser? Or some handcuffs or something?”

“Pshh...I'll be fine. He's calmed down now, and anyway, I've got you guys watching over me, and I know you'll blow his head off if he does anything-”

“Sir, he smashed the camera.”

John turned back to look in the small window. Sure enough, where the blinking sentinel once stood there was now only a thin red wire hanging from a gaping hole.

“Uhh. OK. That's OK. You guys can stand outside the door.”

“No sir. We need to be in the booth to release the lock.”

“Well can't one of you stay?”

They looked at each other.

“Sir, protocol is that we both remain in the booth. We have the other prisoners to think of...”

“OK fine! Just get me a pair of handcuffs. The barred ones.”

Before speaking into the intercom at the door, John had to figure out who he was going to be in that cell. He could not be Nurse John. That guy was going to get his head ripped off. He needed to be a bad motherfucker. A bad motherfucker with Wal-mart bags.


	5. Chapter 5

“Stand up and face the wall.” John shouted into the intercom, hearing his voice echo through the destroyed room. The huddled figure on the floor did not move an inch.

“I said stand up and face the wall now! Place your palms against the wall and don't move!”

This got some reaction. The prisoner stopped rocking and tilted his head towards the door.

John could not see Bane's eyes tucked between the loosened facial bandages, but he felt them pass over him. He slowly rose to his feet, looking strangely comfortable with his injuries as he stretched his body upright. He limped carefully over to the wall, graceful, aware of his vulnerable body, but not pathetic. He placed his palms against the wall, as John had asked, but kept his face turned to the left, watching.

“I said face to the wall. I'm entering the cell, and if you you move one inch...I will have you shot.”

The guards were nowhere near, but John decided that he might as well practice a little bluffing now, since that was going to be his survival tactic once he was alone in a locked room with a raging madman twice his size.

Bane obeyed, but John still wanted to find another excuse to keep him from entering the cell. There was none. He would face truth once before forcing it into the pit of his stomach-he was scared, really scared.

He slid his key in the cell door and hollered to the two cowards in the booth to release the lock. The loud buzz drowned out his noisy entrance, arms full of plastic bags and handcuffs. After the magnetic lock slammed into place, the rustling sounds filled the silent room, and John, who didn't dare take his eyes off the prisoner while he threw his bags on the floor, saw his head turn slightly away from the wall, maybe trying to discern what was happening behind him.

“I said don't you fucking move! Turn and face the wall!”

John was surprised by his own voice, and knew it was the sound of his fear being translated into aggression. 

Bane casually turned back to the wall, and shifted his weight from one leg to the other with a blase` that irritated John. The prisoner was obedient, but not intimidated. For the first time in his life, John wanted to make another man scared. And not for utility, caution, or justice-not for anything but his own satisfaction. He unlocked the handcuffs and dropped the key in his back pocket.

“Hands behind your back.”

Bane lowered his arms and presented his wrists. Although it pleased John to be obeyed, he remained motionless another half-minute, hoping the prisoner would turn his head in expectation so that John could scold him again. But John had no such luck.

“Feeling better, I guess. Judging from the mess you made.” John, kicking a piece of debris that clanked against the wall, stepped closer.

A strong body odor filled his lungs, almost familiar now. He liked it more than ever, but not for the same reasons as before: he liked it because it made Bane seem so abject and corrupted, weak and deserving of ridicule. His legs and arms were covered with nicks, scrapes and reddening scratches that would probably darken into bruises. The two hands John was about to cuff were resting on top of Bane's nude ass, which was still marked from rocking back and forth on the tile floor. And directly above those hands was the bandaged spinal incision John had been unable to check the day before. 

Looking at the bandage, filthy, frayed, and saturated, John imagined how much pain Bane must be feeling as he stood before him, waiting to be cuffed. He remembered the shoulder wound that was surely aching in its present position along with every other injury that he had probably aggravated during his tantrum. Yet he continued to stand there, waiting patiently. It was a game they were playing, John realized. John was pretending not to be scared and Bane was pretending not to hurt. It was a stupid game, obviously, but one that John badly needed to win. 

John covered the distance between them and hooked a cuff around each wrist. He squeezed them together tightly, swallowing hard as he did so and grateful for the clicking restraints that drowned out the evidence of his trepidation. It was different touching Bane now: his body was tense and felt like a stranger's. The rapport and trust John remembered seemed to have evaporated, or maybe never existed at all. In fact, John felt that he could even sense disgust in Bane from the touch of John's hands.

Taking Bane's arm in his left hand, John was preparing to lead him away from the wall but thought better of it. Curious about what was happening in his mind, John wanted see what effect the prolonged contact would have on the prisoner. For a full minute, he remained standing with his hand gripped around Bane's elbow, looking up at the side of his face from behind the wide shoulder, trying to discern meaning from the subtle movements of his prisoner's visible features. He could see Bane's eyes dancing nervously as he furrowed his brow but kept his head rigidly facing the wall, obeying John's orders. He watched the heavy eyelashes flutter as the prisoner blinked furiously, maybe trying to guess John's next move. Perhaps he was worried that his captor might abuse him...

John was excited. Forgetting his fear, he reached into his back pocket, grabbed his cell phone, and jammed the edge of it into the wound on the man's spine. Bane let out a short howl as his body tensed and jolted forward from the assault. John pushed forward too, sandwiching Bane between himself and the wall, still pressing the hard plastic into the bandage, the prisoner shuddering as he choked back any more admissions of agony. 

“You wanna tell me why you did this?” John asked.

He was still pressed against the stiff body, muscles clenching against the torment John was causing with his little phone. He watched beads of perspiration forming along Bane's jagged hairline, and felt his trembling fists twisting hopelessly against their restraints. A wave of euphoria passed over John, confusing enough to make him almost break character to grant a single caress to Bane's elbow with his thumb, just to let him know how good it felt to see him being so obedient and strong despite the pain he was in. But that couldn't happen in this game, so he bit down against his tender instincts and twisted the cell phone softly in the wound.

“I asked you a question, and I know very well that you are capable of both understanding and responding in English. My patience is short, and there's a nine millimeter pressed to the hole in your back, ready to blow it a lot wider. So start talking.”

John spoke slowly, deliberately, enjoying the expressions on the prisoner's face as he translated John's threats into meaning, trying to guess at his small antagonist's motivations. He was still trying to hide his identity, and of course would never speak until John made it clear he had nothing to lose.

John, drunk with power and aching to hear the beast's voice, rose up on his toes, lifted his face close to the prisoner's ear and whispered his name into it.

“Bane!”

The huge body and all its rigid muscles went slack in an instant. John could swear he felt the shock wave that snapped through him at that one word. He lowered himself back onto his feet, and waited for Bane to start breathing again before he continued.

“That was what your commander called himself, was it not? 'Was' being the key term here. He was buried yesterday in the potter's field right outside of this prison. GPD had been looking for his body for weeks, some even thinking that the son of a bitch might still be alive, waiting for other league members, if any were left, to come and rescue his sorry ass. But finally we found what was left of him and threw him in the ground. It's all over the papers, and any sick fucks wanting to be Bane's saviors are left with nothing but their smashed dreams, while the dime-a-dozen lackeys like you are left to rot in prison.”

John gave Bane a minute to unravel this mindfuck, before deciding to take it to the next level. He felt like Clint Eastwood.

“At least that was the official story. But since it's just you and me in here and you're never going to see another living soul for the rest of your short life, I'll let you in on some facts that were left out of the papers. Here's a nice bedtime story: the GPD runs into a surviving group of terrorists held up in a safe house, and it's not until they blow the fuckers to hell that they discover what they're hiding-Bane. They take him into custody, have the doctors fix him up, and they're left with quite a dilemma- do we hand him over to the feds, let them fuck it up like before and allow the media to turn the whole damn thing into a circus, or do we keep him in Blackgate all to ourselves until he gives us the information we need to rid this world once and for all of The League of Shadows.”

John was disappointed by the smug look on Bane's face, complete with tiny crinkles around the eyes that looked like he must be smiling beneath the gauze. He ground the phone into his back again.

“Something amuses you asshole? Maybe you think I don't know who I'm fucking with-”

“You don't.”

Bane's interruption stunned him. The voice was so clear and rich, not even sounding muffled from the gauze, that John could hardly believe it was real. It was not with sarcasm that he asked Bane to repeat himself.

“Excuse me?” He choked out.

“You don't know me. If you did, you would not be trying to fool me with that mobile phone you keep jabbing into my wound like a demented terrier. As if I would believe that they would allow you to bring a firearm in here with a man as dangerous as me. I would break your arm and confiscate that weapon in a second, if I believed that's what it was.”

John felt dreadfully stupid and vicious. Still a little shocked by the comfortable speech of a man who hadn't spoken in close to a month, he slipped his phone back into his pocket and cleared his throat, trying to regain some dignity.

“Can you tell me why you've destroyed the bed and most of the room?” John asked politely.

I was left to suffer. My body has been mutilated. I have no knowledge concerning the fate of my comrades or if they are aware of my capture. I have no idea what time of the day it is or what day of the month. No one comes to my cell, even when I scream, and I wonder if I was left to die. You and your people's intentions are unclear but what is clear is that with you as my caretaker I should be dead within the week. You leave me with nothing but a cruel board studded with restraints that is less comfortable for sleeping than the bare floor. In such circumstances, I find my actions quite understandable.”

Bane now granted himself the liberty to turn around and face John, wanting to see the effect of his words. 

“Turn around!” John barked.

Bane had gotten only a fleeting second of the hurt on John's face but it was more than enough.

“I spent three hours in here with you last night, giving you medicine, cleaning you, feeding you, carrying you, helping you-well, you remember, that ordeal with the fucking toilet! And of my own choice! If I left you to rot in here no one would give a shit! So don't stand there and talk to me like you've been neglected or something.”

“I remember nothing.” 

“What?”

“I remember nothing after your little misunderstanding in here with your superiors yesterday. You were apparently the one chosen to care for this Frankenstein's monster your Gotham doctors have made of me so that I can look my best for the inevitable torture you and your police commissioner are sure to have planned for me. That is James Gordon isn't it? And you are his eager little protege? I'm not surprised. He seems like the type to keep favorites.”

Bane turned around to laugh in his captor's face. John not only let him, he wore a look of hatred that invited the prisoner to carry on with his baiting, wanting to be pushed over the edge. Bane obliged him.

“Oh yes. I can see it all now. The great advocate of white lies and powerful secrets, bringing his most cherished lamb into a dangerous game of deception he can control from a safe distance. Did you feel very special when he called you, full of excitement, to tell you of the dangerous criminal prey he had finally captured, how it must be kept a secret, one that he could only share with you? Did you never wonder why he chose you, of all people, to meet with me alone in my cell and attempt to induce me into a full disclosure of my past and present operations and partners? What are your special qualifications for such a task, John is it? Did you ask yourself? Or maybe you did not. Maybe you are only too aware of the charms you possess, the ones that have already granted you so much favor with your Com-”

Bane was interrupted by the impact of his skull against the wall in front of him as John shoved his forehead into it. It had been his intention to see how long it would take John to shut him up and how he would go about doing it.

“I change my mind. I'm sick of hearing your voice already. You can just shut the fuck up from now on when I'm in here.”

Bane chuckled as he allowed himself to be drug across the room and plunked down on the tiny toilet. He watched the detective as he went to fetch some plastic bags by the door and tore through them when he brought them to the sink. He used this opportunity to study the the pretty face Gordon had sent to him, enjoying him in this wrathful state. His ears stuck out from the side of his neat haircut slightly, and were tinged with pink as was his nose and cheekbones. His reaction to Bane's provocations made him wonder if John was indeed a homosexual that was perhaps unwilling or scared to lead the life of one.

“What the fuck do you think you're looking at?”

John waited for Bane to look away before he continued working. He was enraged. He couldn't believe he had done so much for that asshole last night for him to forget it all and return the favor with adolescent homophobic implications. So much for making headway. Things were going to be a lot different from now on, John told himself as he screwed the hose to the dish sprayer onto the sink.

Bane had lowered his gaze to the hose, guessing what John's intentions were. He watched John test it, shooting a high arc out into the middle of the room, and cringed at the thought of it on his wounded skin. 

“I wonder what you think you're going to do with that thing in your hand, John.” Bane warningly stated.

“I thought I told you to shut the fuck up.” 

John continued to test the sprayer against his hand, raising a fine mist from the impact against his palm.

“ _Young man,_ ” Bane spat through his locked jaw, “I forbid you to aim that device at my body.”

John dropped the sprayer head and Bane wondered if his words had met with success. Without answering, John brought a scissor out of his nurse box for clipping bandages and pointed it at the other man.

“Look. You smell like shit. I can't stand it. You may not notice it after living like a fucking sewer rat for the last couple of months, but this cell smells so awful I can barely breathe. And if you think I'm giving you a sponge bath, you're dumber than I thought.”

John stepped forward and yanked the collar of Bane's gown. He stepped up immediately, fearful of the pain that the gown would cause him from John's rough handling. Using the scissor, John made two small cuts to the sleeves and then used his hands to tear the gown away after he tossed the scissor back into the box. Once Bane stood naked before him, it took the greatest restraint to keep from staring. Before he had only seen disconnected pieces of the man's body, but now, shown in it's full glory, John could barely control himself. He kept his eyes on the ripped garment at Bane's feet.

“Kick it away from you and stand over the drain. Let's get this over with.”

Bane did as he was told and prepared himself, seeing that he was not going to get out of this hellish bathing experience, and that his only option now was to give the detective as little pleasure as possible by bearing through the pain silently. He turned his back to the John, wanting to face away from him while he steeled himself for what was next.

Now John could feast his eyes. He had never seen a man like this, certainly not outside of the body-building magazines he used to collect, and those never showed men naked and handcuffed like the one before him. 

He released a torrent of cold water directly on the lower-back bandage he had been agitating before, waiting for another howl that would clear the lustful thoughts from his mind. Bane hung his head low, until his chin was resting on his chest, not willing to let a single sound slip out of his mouth. John watched his hands ball into fists and twist only momentarily, before they forced themselves into an open relaxed position, shaking as the pain penetrated his every nerve. 

The bandages darkened as John soaked them and began seeping the filth out of them, running down the curves of his body. Bane shifted his weight from one leg to the other other, tightening the muscles of his ass and waist as he continued to hold the agony inside. John threw the nozzle in the sink momentarily while he fetched a water bottle filled with a soapy solution to spray over the covered wounds. He began spraying at the top of the shoulders, watching suds build up and slowly slide inward down the back. The musculature formed a sort of canal down his spine, and John watched the little trails gather and slide down into a great river that inevitable met on the crack of his ass and continued, torturing John's imagination. While he watched this vision, he gave attention to the arms and fingers, which he also generously coated, the bubbles gathering at the ends of his fingertips before joining the ones on his perfect ass on their journey down the thighs.

“Spread your legs.”

Although it had already had more than enough, John now sprayed the ass directly, pointing into the heavy crack and wondering how far in it was penetrating. Wondering how thick the hair was that grew there and if he was getting it clean enough. From what he had already seen, he assumed a more thorough cleaning could be possible. Another day maybe. When he was in a better mood.

The spray bottle continued its descent, now aimed below the obnoxiously round cheeks and hopefully hitting directly on what John imagined was one nasty set of balls. After that, he found the long incisions on the legs that were probably being infected from the filth dripping down from above, so he sprayed excessively here in compensation. As if to confirm this concern, the tile below was pooling up with mustard-colored soap around Bane's feet.

“Ulghh, Jesus. So disgusting.” 

 

Bane opened his eyes to see what John was referring to, still worried about the state of his ravaged body. He saw the familiar orange tone on the tile below, one that most soldiers would recognize immediately

“It's _iodine_ you fool!” He gritted out.

John responded only by turning the needling spray on his skin, catching Bane unaware and earning a yelp, which sounded more like growl coming from such a beast. The dingy pool widened as it overwhelmed the little drain. Large chunks of wasted scab, battered by the spray, slipped through the sagging bandages and joined the party on the tile floor. 

After pulling off the soaking bandages he ordered the man to turn around and face him. John avoided his insolent gaze, which was beginning to genuinely irritate John. Directly above was a choppy growth of dirty blonde hair that had coated John's hand with oil when he rammed his head into the wall a few moments ago. 

John began soaking it with the sudsy water. When it started dripping down Bane's face he gave up, lifting his bare hand high to rub the makeshift shampoo in, exacerbating the dripping that was now causing the bathing victim to squeeze his eyes shut. John figured that he could be gentle to the new face beneath the bandages by letting the shampoo from above down into the bandages, cleaning the wounds indirectly. John squeezed the handle of the the dish prayer, watching the froth flow from Bane's face as he enjoyed his childish expressions.

The weight of the flood started dragging the bandages down, pulling them below Bane's nose and eventually down beneath is mouth. John was impressed as he saw how the pained look in his eyes matched the rest of his features, how the cheeks and lips moved as if they had been his as long as he had been living. Suddenly there was a change in his face, like it went from suffering to shock. He opened his lips as he screamed unintelligibly through gritted teeth, his face shaking.

“Nnnnngh!” 

His face grew red and he doubled over, screaming and sobbing with his cuffed arms laying on top of his back  
.   
John was understandably stunned, but could not be sure that he wasn't witnessing a performance. He dropped the sprayer and watched the man stumble around and wail, sounding like a child that had just lost an arm if children were all grizzly bears. John was suspicious, but each cry was softening his heart, and he began to wonder if he had maybe been wrong to allow soapy water into the skin graft.

“Help! Help me!” Bane collapsed onto the toilet and looked to John with red insistent eyes.

“Pressure! Pressure!”

John stepped forward without thinking, lifting his hands in front of him, a perfect gesture to describe his desire to help but his lack of knowing how. A long string of saliva stretched down from Bane's bottom lip as he continued to force air out of his fixed jaw, making unearthly sounds that were his only means to deal with the the burning pain on his face. His new flesh was completely exposed, agitated by the dripping water, and needed to be protected from the cold air that was like needles against the raw nerves.

John could no longer stand by and watch this. He lifted the wet and fallen bandages that hung around his neck and replaced them over the face as best he could and then flattened his palms against both sides of Bane's face, pressing gently. The howls became grateful whines and John's hands were like a mother hen providing the life-giving warmth to his face, erasing the pain with each second. 

John turned the face upward so that he could remain comfortably in this position. In the silence that seemed so present after the screams, both men could hear and even feel the rhythm of each others breathing. John could see the beginnings of teardrops in the corners of Bane's eyes, who now looked to be in a kind of ecstasy from the relief of John's hands.

“You know I'm going to have to take my hands away at some point.” John spoke softly, his anger and sadism not only quenched, but drowned completely.

“No. Not yet. Unless you want to uncuff me.” Bane lifted his arms slightly to draw attention to his helplessness.

John sighed and began to slightly massage the warmth into Bane's face, drawing little hums of appreciation out of him. 

“Uhhm, I guess we could give you a little bit of the morphine, just to like, make it easier for you to put up with the bathing. And I won't use that thing. I'll use a sponge. I brought one with me, actually. I just...didn't know that other thing would be so bad.”

John whispered, talking to himself as he continued to glide massaging fingers around Banes' face, tracing the planes of his cheeks and the ridge of his nose, feeling like a sculptor, admiring the masculine shape. He had never held a man's face like this before.

Bane's eyes had opened at the word 'morphine' and, seeing that he was able to influence John's actions, he decided to encourage this line of John's thinking.

“...I just don't know how to administer the painkiller to you when you're cuffed like this. It was easy when the bed was here, but, well...”

“Uncuff me.” 

John rolled his eyes in response, which was a no, but the way he expressed this, so comfortably, told Bane that he would be receptive to opposing reason. He just needed to make John understand that Bane had nothing to gain from killing him. At least not now.

“What should I do? Kill you, take your key, overcome an army of guards all posted I know not where, and all of this in the nude and covered with debilitating injury? Please, uncuff me.”

“Hmm...fine, OK.”

John relented so quickly it surprised Bane. He wondered if he couldn't get the boy to break him out of the prison himself if he applied himself to the idea. The pain built slowly in his face after John took his hands away, reaching behind Bane to remove his handcuffs. Just before it became unbearable Bane hands were free to replace John's.

John stood up, setting the heavy cuffs on the sink between them. Both men couldn't help but glance at them, a symbol of trust and forgiveness.

“Do you want to finish, like washing off?”

“The morphine first.” Bane answered authoritatively. 

He watched John prepare the needle, wishing John would have taken more into the syringe, but not wanting to bring attention to his weakness for the drug. John performed his task obviously with the focus and care Bane expected from him. The opiate hit him like a warm ocean, untying knots of pain in every corner of his physical and mental being. 

“Are you ready?” John voice sounded as if it came from the bottom of a deep well. 

He felt as if he was living in a dream, and John was some sort of magical imp. He felt unaccustomed to the power of the drug he had been given, and could now understand what had allowed him to remain unconscious for several weeks. He was sensible to the presence of rushing water near him, and felt a tug on his arm as he was guided to stand up.

John guessed that he hadn't fucked up as bad as he did last time, but the guy still seemed barely able to move. At least he would stand up on his own.

“Here. Put your hands here to keep the bandages from falling while I rinse the soap out. It's warm water and it shouldn't hurt so bad this time.”

He guided the huge hands to Bane's face, not sure if he was understanding a single word. He loaded his sponge with warm mater from the tap, and squeezed it over the prisoner's head slowly, his arm fully extended. The water dribbled over the brow and heavy eyelids carrying the remaining soap away from the hair and apparently causing no discomfort. John repeated the action, this time massaging the around ears gently. Now John attempted to directly rinse inside the bandages, tenderly pulling Bane's fingers back to accomplish this.

“Here, just let me get in there. I promise it won't be like last time.”

John placed his left hand over Bane's, gently lifting them so that he could squeeze the sponge in his right hand through the bandages. Bane allowed this, and then John switched to the other side, moving slowly and with the softest touch, always remembering who was really in charge as long as the handcuffs were off.

The hardest part over, John continued to wash the rest of Bane's body quickly, ignoring the soap and only wishing to rinse the wounds with warm water before he changed them. Bane did not flinch a single time as he tended to the bandages of his arms and chest but seemed to be as aware as John was he moved lower and lower to his groin. John granted a single spongeful of water to his crotch and saw that he reacted to it with a small twitch. John ignored this, or tried to, as he threw the sponge into the sink and grabbed the terry-cloth towel he had purchased.

He began patting him off as slowly as he could, remembering childhood sunburns and how the nurses would care for him at St. Swithin's after a summer day. He would lay the thin cloth over a section of skin, and then smooth his hands over the cloth softly, avoiding the bandages. Finally it was time to wrap the cloth around the groin and John was delighted by the way Bane's prick gently lifted the center of it. He began rubbing gently around the thighs and inner leg, avoiding the area, but wondering to himself how some things can be more erotic when they are slightly disguised than when they stand naked in the open. Unable to resist any longer, he swiped a last pass across this section of Bane's body, and let his hand slide across Bane's half-hard cock before quickly moving on to avoid suspicion.

He patted off both legs and even dabbed the tops of his feet, before seating him again to change bandages. John worked quickly, whistling along, moving around the drugged beast on the toilet. While he was working on the thighs, again staring at the little penis, now shrunk and nestled inside its foreskin while the owner nodded off, John's phone rang, waking Bane and even making John drop a cotton ball on the ground.

“Hello?”

“Hey. You still in there? I'm out here parked next to your car. I thought I'd be the one who was late.”

“Oh shit. Yeah, I'll be right there, just gimme a minute.”

John hurriedly replaced the bandage and got Bane to his feet. It was then that he realized he had no place to put him. The cell was now a certified mess, one that John had added to with his plastic bags and cardboard containers he had thrown around the place. 

John moved quickly, tearing the wrap around the thin Styrofoam mattress open and tossing it on the floor. The sticky surface would not be comfortable and there was no pillow, but it would have to work for now.

He guided his patient over to the mattress in the corner, and it took at least seven minutes to slowly lower him onto the floor and arrange his body so that none of the wounds were being too terribly irritated. John draped the terry-cloth towel over his naked body as he drifted off to sleep despite the most uncomfortable conditions. 

Although Jim was waiting, he took a minute to touch the fresh facial bandages to make sure they fitted tightly. He felt Bane's breath escape the folds over the mouth, and remembered how he had begged him to cradle his face and the way he had looked, so fragile and yet so beautiful with tears in his eyes. The doctors had been right, it was a pretty face they had given him, and one that fit well with what had been left from before. 

As he continued to stroke the sleeping beauty's face, John remembered when he had asked himself why such a man,with endless resources, would choose to wear a mask instead of repairing himself. Now John saw the reason- a face like his would be easier to love than to fear.


	6. Chapter 6

John could hear Gordon coughing even before he saw the sedan. He saw a cigarette butt fly out the window as he rounded the back of the car and opened the passenger door.

“Think you might wanna try cutting back a little bit? Or quitting, there's a concept.”

Gordon beat his chest lightly with his fist as he tried to catch his breath.

“What the hell else is there to do while I sit out here in the parking lot waiting for you to show up to the meeting _you_ scheduled with _your boss_.”

“All right, you win.” John said, laughing as he slammed the door.

“Yeah, you bet your ass I win.” 

Gordon cleared his throat and grabbed a worn-out accordion file from the back seat. John wanted to make a joke about the recent invention of portable laptop computers, but Gordon spoke first.

“So how you two getting along in there, all right?”

“Uh, yeah,” John lied, “I mean, about as well as a cop and a terrorist can expect to get along, I guess.”

“He talkin' yet?”Gordon licked his finger and started shuffling through papers in the antique he held in his lap.

“Um, yeah, we were talking to each other just a little while ago, before you called me.”

“Really?” Gordon stopped shuffling, a shocked look on his face as he stared at John over the rims of his glasses.

“Yeah.” 

“You serious?”

“Yeah.” John wondered why this was so shocking.

“Even with his mouth wired shut like that?”

“Yeah, I mean you can still talk with your mouth wired shut, especially him.” John said, waving off Gordon's disbelief. “That mask held his jaw closed for fifteen years or so. That's the only way he probably _knows_ how to talk.”

“What?! How do you know that?”

A jolt went through John, flooding him with adrenaline. Fuck. These are the reasons I hate myself, he thought. He remained still, thinking of an appropriate response.

“Hello? Earth to Detective Blake! Anyone home?” 

“Yeah, I uh, I tried it on. The mask.”

“You _what!?_ ”

“I tried it on!” 

Gordon just continued to stare at John blankly over the tops of his glasses. John stared back, nervously twisting the hairs on the nape of his neck like a little boy in trouble.

Then Gordon just laughed. Out of nowhere.

“Jesus, talk about doing a thorough investigation.” 

He went back to the file and started throwing papers on the seat next to John as he exhaled deeply.

“Good police work, kid. I don't even know if I would go that far. Probably give me nightmares for a week. But, hey-you _did_ get rid of that thing, didn't you?”

“Yes! Come on, Jim, I'm not stupid.”

“I'm not saying you are, I'm just-well-what'd you do with it, anyway?”

John went back into silent mode. His brain was going a-mile-a-minute.

“I burned it.”

“You burned it? Where?”

“In City Park. In one of those barbecues by the indoor pool.”

“You barbecued Bane's mask in City Park.”

After another weird silence, Gordon laughed again.

“Very symbolic, John. You're quite the poet. Then what did you do?”

“I threw the scrap metal in the gutter leading to the sewer. It was unrecognizable, but if anyone does find it, they won't be surprised to find it down there.”

“Yeah, I guess you're right. So, what did you guys get to talking about. Did you spill the beans to him?”

John wondered if Gordon would be disappointed. 

“You mean about his identity? Yeah, of course. I mean, he wasn't going to talk otherwise-”

“Then he knows you're breaking the law-that you're lying.”

“Yeah, I guess, but I thought you said that we had to because-”

“Shh. That's not the point. Listen, he is dangerous. He will try to make you question your actions. Just be careful. Really fucking careful.”

This time he took the glasses off to look at John, rubbing his eyes first, as if he needed to think of what to say.

“Just-don't give him any more. Remember, you're there to mine _him_ for information. This is not 'quid pro quo' with Hannibal Lecter; he doesn't want to know about you, he wants to know _how to get out of there_. And believe me, he's gotten out of worse shit before, so don't underestimate him. Once you read all this shit I got for you, you'll understand. I just didn't think things would go so fast between you two, so I waited until now to give it to you.”

“Hey, not to be rude, but I've already gone through all the files on Bane, as well as Daggett and Stryver, so-”

“These aren't GPD files, Blake. This accordion file doesn't stay in my office or even in my home. I keep this in a safe.”

John thought about this for a second and looked down at some of the papers sitting next to him on the seat. One read the name 'al Ghul' on the header-that was the leader of the League of Shadows during their previous attack on Gotham over ten years ago, after which Bane presumably took up the mantle. He pushed that one aside, and saw a much fatter file without a header that seemed to be filled with the details of various pirating, pillaging, and ransoming adventures Bane and his militia had been indulging in for the last five to seven years. 

“Are you talking to the CIA after all?”

“What?”

“Where else would you get this from?”

“Not the CIA. I had...other sources. One other source. A good friend, we'll say. One that I'll miss...”

Gordon was silent, and looked over to John with rueful eyes. 

“Batman.” John guessed.

He looked back to the papers at his fingertips, and spread his palms over them like they were a monument to his dead hero.

“These are all I have that could help us now. I don't know where he got it from. Maybe it was some sort of a feed from the CIA, I have no idea,” Gordon spoke and then stared out of the window in front of him, lost in his thoughts.. He chuckled, then spoke under his breath, forgetting he was not alone.

“Makes sense now. He had the resources.” 

“What's that? Jim?”

Gordon shook himself out of it, and realized the mistake he had made.

“Nothing kid. Shit, I guess I need some coffee or something.”

But John had heard him fine. Batman had access to so many resources because Batman was billionaire Bruce Wayne. _Gordon knew._ John guessed he shouldn't be surprised by that, since he was the point of communication between GPD and Batman, but he had figured that if Gordon knew he would have told John. Why would Gordon trust John with Bane but not the identity of Batman?

John, stung by Gordon's secrecy, pretended to be interested in another file beside him, this one with the name 'Tate, Miranda' written on the tab. His pretended interest became genuine.

“The environmentalist? She's dead, right? What's she got do with all this?”

“I don't know if I'd call her an 'environmentalist', but she was the one in control of Wayne Enterprises in those last days, which was probably exactly what she was after. What she wasn't was _real_. That file is complete bullshit. A bogus identity. There was no Miranda Tate. And not even Bruce Wayne knew that, even with all his...resources and caution.”

“Who was she then?”

“I have my suspicions, but I can't prove anything. Everything I'm telling you, John-”

“You can trust me, Jim.”

“Well she was in the truck carrying the bomb when it was about to go off. I thought she had been taken hostage, as she was sitting in the passenger seat when we stopped the vehicle. It was...it was Batman she spoke to when she said these words-'Prepare yourselves. My father's work is done'”

“Al Ghul?”

“Who else?”

“She must have also been the one carrying the trigger, and the one who wanted to arm a bomb knowing it would be too unstable to last even a few months.”

“You know what kills me, Blake, and I hate to admit it? That she died thinking she had succeeded. Those were her last words-'My father's work is done.' It was a suicide mission from the beginning and she died with the satisfaction that she had murdered millions of innocent people. I have never wanted there to be an afterlife so badly in all my years of police work as much as I want there to be a hell where she is suffering, knowing how she failed.”

This was a cold admission, and something about it reminded John of his first minutes in the cell with Bane that morning. Gordon was silent for a few seconds, and then began speaking again as if he was answering a question. 

“There are only rumors and legends, John, confusing ones built by God-knows-who. I would venture to say that the only one still living who could shed any real light on these mysteries is your friend, Mr. 133-8046 himself. It's Miranda Tate that's the real thorn in my side. I want to know how we never heard a single thing about her in all the years that we were gathering information after al Ghul's attack. Not a single mention of al Ghul even having a child! Why? And why was she here operating with a man who had been excommunicated by her father from the League of Shadows in order to bring his twisted ambitions to life. Have you told him anything about the aftermath of the occupation?”

No, not really. Our conversations are more based around matters-at-hand...But wait, back up. Excommunicated? I thought Bane was _leading_ the League.”

“That was the illusion, if you ask me. It had to have been Miranda all along. But don't let my thinking influence you. You have the instincts, you go through those papers to see what strikes a chord in your mind and use that to see what you can get from Bane. I need to know if there's any more of these...long lost kids, ex-league members, or any other hooligans running around out there with connections to al Ghul. Anyone that's broken bread with him is on my shit list and I wanna find 'em, no matter how minor the contact is. Anyone, no loose ends.”

“So where did the media get the idea that Bane's army was the return of the League of Shadows?”

“All I did was confirm the rumors that the press had come up with-it was a natural assumption for everyone. Bane's rhetoric was similar to al Gul, as well as the scale of the attack. Why not give the people a clear and familiar enemy, already destroyed, and keep the keep the scary questions for ourselves?”

Gordon raised an eyebrow, which John missed. His mind was racing as he tried to grapple with why Bane would be willing to give his life to the ideas of a man who had rejected him. Unless...

“Were they lovers?”

“I've thought of that. But I just don't see it. Call me shallow. I mean, it's possible that he loved her, even likely-she was very beautiful. But I doubt she would have returned those affections. Come on, the man was, well...can you see anyone cuddling up to him? I can't. She was probably using him. And if he doesn't know that she's dead, well, he may be waiting for a rescue.”

John felt a strange twinge, of something he couldn't understand and didn't want to. He picked up all the papers, remembering that there was something he wanted to do before being due back in Bane's cell that night.

“OK, Jim, I've got to go, but one more thing-are there any more huge, earth-shaking secrets you plan on sharing with me here in this parking lot? I just want to be prepared if this is going to be, like, a daily thing.”

“No, son, that's all I got.” 

“Yeah that's what you said last time.”

Gordon laughed and started lighting a cigarette as John hopped out and immediately got into his car parked just beside Gordon's. John was in such hurry that he almost back into Gordon as he was pulling out, then waved apologetically at the baffled older man.  
**********  
A password. All he needed was a password, and he could give Gordon everything he wanted. More maybe than John could have gotten from Bane, if he could only find the password.

It was not first time he had sat at this outrageous desk, in front of several blank screens and imagined what they could show him if he could only gain access. But before there had not been the urgency, before had just been curiosity, and now he had to find out what information Bruce Wayne was keeping down there in that cave-John's cave. Or was it John's cave?

Again the anger passed through John when he asked himself why Bruce hadn't simply put the password in the duffel bag along with the coordinates. It meant one of three things, either he did not want John to access the computer, he assumed John would know the password, or he had simply forgot. The third possibility was ridiculous, the first cruel and and the second,well, John was starting to doubt his own investigative abilities even if Gordon and Bruce seemed to have so much faith in them.

But still the screens stood before him silent and empty except for one small one in the right hand corner, only asking politely- “Password?”

John watched the flashing cursor in despair. He had tried everything he could think of, every significant date and name in Bruce's life and the lives of those he loved. It almost felt invasive. After an hour or so of failed attempts, he stopped to wonder if Bruce indeed had not meant for him to access his computer. But why would he let it remain? He wanted John to be here, and he must have wanted him to use the computer as well as the other, more exciting tools. The password must be something obvious..

He was feeling desperate and considered just yanking out the hard drive and taking it down to headquarters to be hacked. He called on his patience to remind him how impossible this non-option was, and lay back in the chair, lacing his fingers over his eyes and opening his brain to any inspiration that wanted to jump inside. Then a thought came to him, one that felt so vain and presumptuous that he couldn't even bring himself to type it in for a few seconds. 

“Can't hurt to try...” He spoke out loud. Then he typed in the three first words he had ever learned.

“ROBIN JOHN BLAKE”

John was almost worried when he hit 'enter' and the whole screen went blank. But only a second later, the screens came flashing to life, lighting up John's face.

“Yes!”

Well, John thought, laughing, forgiving himself of all his faults, he'd never considered himself a self-centered kind of guy.  
**********  
After the initial glow of his triumph wore off, he was able begin searching in earnest, and quickly understood what a daunting task it would be. The sheer amount of information brought up from each search was overwhelming and terrifying. As alone as he knew he was, he couldn't stop looking over his shoulder, aware that what he was viewing was jealously protected information from sources all over the world, most of it gathered at the price of human lives.

As a way to add some structure to his efforts, he decided to start by reviewing Gordon's files and finding particular things he wanted to dig deeper into. He reached down below the desk, and into the the rugged green sack he had shoved the files into. He had planned to burn it, along with the mask, as soon as he got home from Blackgate, but realized that he could easily hide it safely in Wayne's cavern, still unable to part with it and convincing himself that it might come in handy some time in the future.

He brought out the files, and began with Miranda Tate.

Nothing about her felt genuine. Her background seemed like something cut and pasted directly out of a Bronte novel. She was raised in an orphanage somewhere in Hungary, and as a teenager in a convent, she inherited a large fortune from some vague uncle without any other relatives. Young Miranda then devoted her life to environmentalism, using ther fortune to sponsor and initiate various projects, gaining attention and connections that would eventually put her in the social circles of Gotham's elite citizens. She moved there and was sure to be participating in energy-saving projects there, exactly the kind Wayne Enterprises was involved in. To John, her trail was like that of a weed growing quickly in the direction of sunshine-Bruce Wayne, and he couldn't imagine how Wayne couldn't have been suspicious. 

Bane's file had been equally story-like, but more believable. There were no facts; only a collection of rumors and tales of his beginnings, his brutality, and his involvement in various atrocities. He was either born in a prison or was sent to one when still only a child-an orphan growing up in hell without any love. (John tried to feel nothing when he read this, but it was impossible.) At some point, while still a young child, he had climbed his way out of this hell, a pit, in the desert, and had survived to adulthood only by tooth and nail. His intelligence and ferocity had caught the attention of Ra's al Guhl, always looking for a certain breed of talent, and he was trained in the League of Shadows. But Bane had not been appropriate for al Ghul's purposes, and the accounts differ as to why: some say it philosophical, some say Bane could not control his rage, some say he simply was not good enough, and others say that al Ghul feared Bane meant to depose him. One way or another, Bane eventually found himself a feared mercenary in Northern Africa, amassing a fortune as well as a loyal army, and seemingly without limits or respect for human law or life as he continued to terrorize the continent.

Much of the information for al Ghul, Bane, and the League was contradictory and confusing, some of it even fantastic. It was taken from interviews with witnesses, associates, and captured League members all under torture or the stress of fear and intimidation and therefore not entirely trustworthy. However, there was one item that was not in the files Bruce gave to Gordon but was present in many of the reports that was of particular relevance to the question of loose ends-the burning of al Ghul's large villa and training grounds about two years after Bane's excommunication. Apparently, after the disappointment with him, Ras had found another strong candidate, one he believed could follow in his footsteps and lead the League of Shadows when the time came. But there was another falling out, this time even more devastating, leading to the near-death of al Ghul, the loss of his villa, and the death of several of the League's greatest warriors.

John tried to imagine a face to put to this legend as he sped his car across the bridge he had once seen blown in half. He was returning from the cave in late dusk, rushing to grab his supplies from home before he returned to Blackgate. He knew he would be tempted to begin questioning Bane about this mystery man (or woman) tonight, but thought he should consult with Gordon first, even if it meant revealing the existence of the cave.

And why hadn't Bruce passed that bit along to Gordon? Another League member, out there, who had left on worse terms than Bane must surely seem to Bruce like something Gordon should know about... 

Other questions rolled through his thoughts, crashing into and mixing with each other like waves on a beach. Had they (the mysterious entity) infiltrated on Bane's behalf, a traitor from the beginning? Had they joined Bane afterward, and were they still a silent ally out there waiting to strike? Able to rescue Bane from Blackgate if they had the slightest inkling he was there, living? Was this second member Miranda Tate? Was the entire burning of the villa a made-up story? Or was this- _everything happening right now_ -only a phase in a greater plan, where Miranda Tate was only a pawn whose time was up, and Bane and another even more unimaginable adversary something prepared for Gotham right when it had it's guard down.

This final question made him doubt both his sanity and his ability to trust anyone or anything around him.Who was present when Bane was injured, and why was it so important to fix him up, anyway? If people like Miranda Tate and Daggett could all be shown to have conspired with Bane, who else did that hasn't been discovered yet? The hospital, the police, the prison, Bane's associates could be anywhere. Even Gordon, much to John's chagrin, had a way of continually reminding him how easy it was for him to lie and hide things. 

John decided he had better not share the cave with Gordon yet, or even the information he had uncovered from it. Nothing, it seemed could be completely trusted. Nothing except the memory of Bruce Wayne.  
**********  
He awoke, that was all. He didn't how long he had been asleep, or how long it had been since he woke up. In fact, he may have only imagined having slept, and only a few moments had passed since the disappearance of his strange little caretaker. The dull throb in his jaw hinted at a different reality, though, since the morphine was already wearing off. The fluorescent lights in his cell were a little softer since he had smashed a few, and those that flickered added some variety to his environment, but it was still nothing compared to relief of darkness. 

_Peace of mind._

It was one of his favorite English phrases, and one that baffled him when he first learned the language. For many years he believed it was 'piece of mind,' and users of the phrase were to him endearingly humble to desire only a small piece of their complete mental faculties, as if that would be heaven enough in this vulgar and chaotic world. Now, staring up at the flickering lights on the ceiling of his prison cell, that was what he craved more than anything in the world. Peace of mind.

But what price would that peace come at? If peace came in the form of information about the safety and whereabouts of a certain individual, what could he do with that information as he was, locked in a prison he could still not find a way out of? He had destroyed the room, but clearly the strictest protocols were in place concerning his custody, since no one came, not even to beat him or to sedate him. He had searched the bed for any type of surveillance, stripped the walls for wires, smashed the cameras, but nothing could induce these people to open his cell. To repair the damage, they would not move him out of his cell even for a moment so that he could survey the prison in which he was being held.

His only way out of the cell was through the boyish detective who could be manipulated. But that would require concentration, which, needless to say, would be aided by peace of mind, or at least deliverance from the torment of a repeating memory, his last one, seconds before he blacked out. It was Talia, and her words were still as clear as flickering lights above him.

“Prepare a convoy. We must secure the bomb until it detonates.” 

As he said his last goodbye, he kept his eyes on her and the shotgun in his hand firmly on Wayne. Struggling against every fiber of his body that wanted to scream his beloved's name, and beg him to turn around so that he could see his face one last time, he continued to watch Talia walk towards the sunlight where his beloved was waiting for her. And he remembers that he was about to do it, about to give in to this final weakness, when a miracle happened. As if he sensed Bane's desire, Barsad turned around one final time to look at his lover, before leaving with Talia, forever.


	7. Chapter 7

Finally a distraction: the buzzer in the hall was going off for the fifth time that day. The second time it had been the detective, and something told Bane this was him returning. He stood up and secured the towel around his waist before walking to the wall and facing it, waiting, his palms spread flat against the torn plaster.

 

"Well at least now the two of you can have some privacy."

John's favorite guard was referring to the busted camera as he passed John an oversized orange jumpsuit. Instead of delivering the sleeping beauty joke he still had saved, or simply pointing out that a security camera isn't useful anyway without conscious guards behind it, John smiled tensely and found himself surveying the guard desk, still hungover from his paranoid fantasies.

He felt even more uneasy when he looked in the cell window and saw Bane waiting for him. John had raised his hand to use the intercom button, but having nothing to announce, he lowered it and got ready with the lock. He entered and casually left the plastic box and uniform on the sink after he heard the door slam behind him. The greatness and character of the hulking body was all Bane-but John couldn't help feeling that an effort was being made to hide his face. He didn't like it.

John approached the waiting prisoner with patient, measured steps meant to hide his apprehension. He cuffed the wrists and brusquely whipped his body around to face him. He was greeted by the same face he had left hours before, now slightly twisted in an expression of indignation. John breathed a sigh of relief.

"Expecting someone else?" Bane asked sarcastically.

"Next time you can just wait 'til I announce myself before facing the wall. You don't get brownie points for divining my arrival."

John turned and walked to the sink to prepare his materials, leaving Bane to wonder whether he would be pampered or tortured this session. It only mattered because the detective's mood should be considered as he planned his line of questioning. He remained standing where John had left him, and noticed that he was not being watched. The detective was distracted, nervous. 

"When will you tell me what has become of my militia?"

"Your militia? Defining your band of terrorists as a militia is a rather loose interpretation of the word, don't ya think?"

"I armed the citizens of Gotham so that they might protect themselves from outside interference as they rebuilt their society from the ground up. They were a militia, and I was their commander."

"You aided the escape of a couple thousand murderers and assorted scumbags, gave them some automatic weapons and made them grunts for you and your favorites. You're not exactly George Washington." 

John sniggered, lifting his eyes from his gloved hands to look directly at Bane. "And you can save the bullshit class-struggle rhetoric because I already know this was a suicide/revenge mission with no intention outside of utter fucking destruction."

John was ripping open small packages of alcohol wipes and adhesive bandages with about as much swagger as was humanly possible as he spoke, arranging them on the blue lid of the box. Bane had moved to the toilet and seated himself there, noting that John never once looked up from his hands to watch him. 

"And for whom did I seek revenge?"

"Now there's a tricky question. It would be easy to suppose that you were here to avenge the death if your predecessor, Ra's al Ghul. But that would be assuming he was your predecessor-he wasn't. You were cast off. Unwanted. You could only return to the League to lead his men after he died. You wanted to accomplish what he never could, and you found a willing companion in his daughter, Miranda."

"Talia is dead, then?"

“Talia? That was her name? Talia...al Ghul?”

Bane's silence was answer enough.

"Yes, she's dead." 

"And the bomb?"

"She was protecting it when the police killed her. The bomb was detonated over the bay. Less than thirty lives were lost in the blast."

John looked to see how Bane took this. He was tempted to mention his hero's involvement, or commend the few who had died in Gotham's place, but something told him to leave it. He continued from where he was interrupted.

"Maybe she believed you felt as passionately about her father's broken ideology as she did, or maybe she believed that your love for her was strong enough to make you forget how al Ghul had left you out in the cold. But you don't strike me as an idealist or that much of a romantic. To me you're just a bitter son of a bitch. And a hard-headed one, too."

John waited another pause. He had been loading the syringe and now turned to face Bane. 

The man sat still.

"There's still another layer to this, though. So far we have the sociopath extremist patriarch and his ice queen daughter with understandably complicated daddy issues, you, the adopted and then rejected Quasimodo probably suffering from some unrequited love...I just feel like something's missing. This story is still short one character. I have a rough outline but maybe you can help me flesh him out-”

"Where is he!" 

Bane stood up and spoke without thinking, but did not regret it. He heard only what his hope and obsession wanted to in John's words. References to his painful past, no matter how stupid and oversimplified, could not hurt a man with only one thing to lose.

John had been aiming to provoke a response but had not thought success would be so quick. He stood there frozen in silence, with a cotton ball dripping alcohol, feeling like a hunter who had found his game so close to him that he was afraid to cock his weapon.

"Who?" John knew the question was stupid, but had no idea were he wanted to take this thing. All he knew is that he wanted to be the one taking it, not Bane.

Bane's eyes repeated his last question, boring holes into John's skull. Time to improvise.

"I can find him. But I need your help."

"No! No more. No games. Tell me where he is. I must see him. He must know that I am alive."

"You believe he has been apprehended? "

"Hasn't he?"

This was Bane's first inclination that he had perhaps just given himself away to a fool who was only pretending to know what he was talking about. The danger of hope. He was re-learning his own lessons. 

"I wonder if we are referring to the same person." Bane sat down again.

"Of course we are. Your brother in the League, the one that followed your path away from al Ghul. As promising a killer as you were, and a greater humiliation.”

Bane raised his eyes to John, hope renewed, but confusion deepened. John continued, finally setting down the dripping cotton ball as he began to prepare the syringe.

“That's because he left _by choice_ to stand by you. His greatest pupil betraying his trust and abandoning him to join the one he rejected. Ra's must have been livid.”

John allowed a dramatic pause as he measured a small amount of morphine into the barrel.

“I know you need to see him. To him you're dead. If you want to see him, there's only one way: he would have to come here. But I need to know who he is. I need you to tell me."

As Bane tried to unravel the mystery of this reply, John was bending over him with a syringe in his mouth and the wet cotton ball in his ungloved hands. Without giving it a thought, Bane straightened his body to allow John to deftly dump a small dose of morphine into his bloodstream, enough to smooth the sharp edges of his healing pains and relax his inhibitions. He wanted to see Barsad and John might bring him there if Bane identified him. That was simple, but the question was why John gave a damn about him anyway. What could he possibly want?

John was working quickly. The gauze from Bane's face was laying in tangled gobs on the floor as John looked at the pink swollen skin beneath. It was tight and dry from the heavy rinsing and shiny like an over-peeled sunburn. Still, the appearance had improved remarkably. Maybe all he had really needed was a good washing, John thought as he began smoothing vaseline gently over Bane's face.

"What is your interest in him?" Bane asked.

John had no response to this question. He had no idea what danger this individual presented, if any. He only knew that he existed. He thought fast and fell back on the vague, officious non-speak all plainclothes learn so quickly.

"My goal is to identify the major participants of this occupation, to put them in protective custody, and to question them in regards to the League of Shadows. This city, and even this police department, is suffering from the beginnings of a mob mentality. Your comrade is in danger if he is on the street or in the general population upstairs. We can hold him like we're holding you. For interviews and protection. We need everything we can get, for indictments and profiling purposes. He will be safe. I'm here to crush terrorism, not people."

Short, terse, rote sentences, for multi-purpose use, easily plucked out of one's brain, Bane thought, disgusted.

"Not here to crush people, John?" Bane laughed. "You wish that was true. But cruelty is the cleavage left over from the repression of natural violence. Your private foray with my broken body was a nice little metaphor for your society's triumph over the freedom I represent. The men you mean to crush are your own. And those you can't crush you maim and abuse for your pleasure. Do you think you are the first man to find gratification in my helplessness and abjection? I know only too well what festers and stinks in the hearts of men like yourself, and I pity you. I should ask _you_ to save your rhetoric. I will play your game nonetheless.”

John had stopped both the strokes of his hand as well as his thought process. He would not be able to unpack the humiliating meaning of the tirade here, now, but the words were tattooed in his brain, where he could feel them burning. He moved past the horrifying and true implications like a blind man past a predator, forcing his hand to continue its ministrations without looking into Bane's eyes.

He finished with the petroleum jelly and returned to the sink to unravel some fresh gauze from a spool. 

"I need to be able to identify him. Tell me something about him that is unique. This is not a game."

Bane did not answer. John was re-wrapping the silent face and considering the next steps of his operation: tending to the chest wounds and as well as those on his thighs. He was terrified of the confrontation of this flesh, as blank memories of Bane's recent words made his face warm up again. Bane again straightened his back for John as he bent over him, not speaking as he began to peel back the tape around the shoulder bandage. The wounds, most of them were clean, but John deftly applied some extra cream to them, and speedily replaced the tape. He was in a hurry to get away from the suffocating cell.

“Give me the night to consider your offer. I will give you my answer when I see you in the morning.”

For a moment John considered arguing with him, telling him that identifying his partner was not exactly an option. John could sense an excitement in Bane and wanted to take advantage of his recklessness: chances were, that Bane thinking seriously about his offer would result in him turning it down. Because John was lying. There was no way Gordon was going to let John bring another League member in Bane's cell and Bane was going to figure that out five minutes after John left.

On the other hand, John had no limit on the amount of lies he could feed Bane to appease his suspicion.   
He could spare him the night if it would make him feel like he was in control.

“That's fine.” John cleared his throat, then nodded and pointed toward his legs. “I'm ready to check your thigh bandages.” He stated casually.

“They're fine.” Bane's voice was heavy with warning, piercing John's gut like an electric shock. He had to swallow against the nauseous shame that followed, but still felt unable to defend himself explicitly. 

He turned away from Bane and and began gathering his supplies at the sink, returning them to the box and separating the trash. He threw the orange jumpsuit on mattress that lay on the opposite side of the room. 

“That's for you. It doesn't have a number on it, because your not leaving the cell. Put them on after I leave.”

He refused to look Bane in the face.

“All right. Get up and face-”

“Why should I believe that you would actually bring my lieutenant to this cell, when you have reminded me so many times that no one but you may enter?”

“You have no choice but to trust that I can make an exception. Besides, in exchange for important information, deals can be made.”

“And why will I not receive any medication to last me the night?"

"What you were given should be enough. You have a high tolerance that we should start weening. Besides, you'll need a clear mind to think on, won't you?"

Bane considered the suffering he would experience that night but could not regret its cause. He had hurt John badly, and the price was fair. He did not protest.

"Just face the wall." John spoke with a bored tone.

 

After jogging down the sixteen flights of stairs from his apartment, he dvd jewel cases pressing against the inside of John's garbage bag looked as if the were about to tear a hole. John still took the time to hold the door open for the blind Cuban lady that lived on the first floor who addressed him by name when she thanked him. He wondered how she knew who he was.

There were changes in John's neighborhood. The thud and clatter of the garbage bag and the jewel cases spilling out of them echoed in an empty duster. And the liquor store where John went to buy a fifth of bourbon was making a killing selling tickets on the first day of the lottery's re-opening. 

He drank in the dark, watching the neon blue fade into black out his living room window. Drinking alone is for alcoholics and non-drinkers, John mused, because they only drink out of pain and no one wants them at the bar. He watched the people moving on the street, the loudest of their voices reaching all the way to his open window high above them. Life was coming back to Gotham. The silhouettes of people moving past their windows were also displayed to John. He felt lonely and took another sip as if getting drunk was a task. Stray memories and self-pity began flirting in his head.

During the occupation, life had been blessedly simple. Any moment could be death. He had justified a lifetime of half-measures, spending every minute fighting for Gotham and had given the best of himself to Batman and Gordon. If he wanted he could even believe that he was part of the reason there was still a Gotham for these people to call home. But once the bomb was gone, the desire, the loneliness, the inner conflict had returned. He hated what he was, mostly because he couldn't reconcile the different pieces of himself. Was he a carefree miscreant, reveling in the depravity of transgressive desires simply because they were forbidden, or was he a philanthropist that wanted the simple joys of life- a wife and family, a 401K and barbecues on Sundays? 

He had always believed in the primacy of action: that whatever exists inside a person is secondary to their legacy. And John's record was not only pristine, it was saintly. But inside the transgressive bits of him were being crushed and stewing, fermenting and waiting to explode. There had already been minor eruptions in the cell with Bane, and unfortunately for John, Bane was exactly the type of man who would recognize what he was seeing, even experiencing it as a victim. 

Crushed. That was the the most astute word Bane have used to describe what John had been doing to himself for the last twenty years.

Now John was drunk, and he was in one of those moods where he took pride in the hidden part of himself, took pride in the thought of what others would think if they knew what went on in John's head while he stood in line at the store, or played basketball with kids at St. Swithin's, or rode beside them in the police cruiser. But this time he couldn't feel that perverse contrary joy. Because it was ugly, and Bane had made him see it for what it was: repression. He had always told himself that the different parts of him were mutually exclusive, and couldn't coexist in a single soul. But they did in his, and he had been crushing both parts of himself to keep them separated-why? Because society dictated that? But wasn't that the society he had sworn to protect with his life?

There was no way out of this cycle of thoughts, not tonight. John poured himself another, figuring that drunken sleep was the only option left to him. Tomorrow he could drag himself back to the prison and face Bane and hopefully be too numbed by the hangover to care about his doubtless negative judgments. There was something infuriatingly blue-blooded and haughty about Bane, John realized, which made his philosophical positions so absurd. The arrogant pattern of his speech, the noble features of his face, and even the god-like proportions of his body were all so ironically regal. Mesmerizing, beautiful and intelligent, what would such a man be like if he had been raised outside of a pit?

John felt inferior in his presence; he could say that plainly to himself now. And he hated it. What had Gordon said about the two men? That Bane would open himself to John because the two were so alike? Maybe it was true that both men had crammed themselves into unlikely social roles and had succeeded in those roles despite themselves, but could Gordon really be so perceptive? Or was he simply mistaking zealotry for a mask?

Sleep came quickly but did not stay. John was up at a quarter to four, thirsty, head pounding, and knowing he would not be getting back to sleep. 

 

In the pit there had never been a real silence. Many men found reasons to lie awake at night, and insanity and sleeplessness were as common as they were noisy. But silence, as he had learned in these last few days was by far more fertile than what he would have expected. In silence fear and obsessions grow like weeds, choking out organized and fruitful thought. There was not the urgency that fuels productive reasoning, only the hollowness that lusts for repetition. The broken lights had caused some irregularity in his environment, for that he was grateful. 

His greatest hope, and his greatest fear, was that Barsad had slipped through Gotham's net, never to be found by anyone. He believed Bane to be dead, and was now beginning the next phase of his life, ready to be loved by another. He could still be hiding in Gotham, looking for a way out, but after three weeks, such a thing was unlikely. Or there was another possibility, but Bane would not allow himself to consider it. 

He would tell Detective Blake how to find Barsad. After all, Bane could accomplish nothing as long as he didn't play along with John, and any extension of his influence beyond the four walls of his cell was desirable. He wished he could know what John was interested in Barsad for, beyond his being the only other living soul who had been trained by Ra's. Except, of course...but John could not possibly know about Wayne. And Bane still hated thinking about how the spoiled child had thrown away the honor that Ra's had given him, the one that should have been Bane's. He stopped this train of thought.

Exhaustion lengthened the downbeat of his blinking eyelids; he closed them, and for the first time in his life, referred to memories of the pit for its soothing effect. At least there, the cycle of the sun kept one from going crazy.

 

Something was burning the sensitive organs inside of Bane's face. This was new, unfamiliar but not totally alien. Smelling, he remembered. An unpleasant sting invaded his awareness with each inhalation. It was coming from the detective.

John's face was swollen; he looked as if he had aged ten years since his last visit, and both men winced as John flicked a few air bubbles from the barrel of the syringe.

He could also sense the alcohol from the swab that John used before introducing the needle's prick to his arm. He supposed he should feel celebratory about the return of a functioning olfactory system. His desire to share was being suppressed by his dislike for the detective and his awful scent. He found a way to work around this dilemma. 

“Your aftershave is an abomination Detective Blake.”

The needle was pushing against the indentation in Bane's arm, ready to spring forward with just a little more pressure. John's trembling hands paused at the sound of Bane's voice.

“So is your style of expressing gratitude. Asshole.”

With a pop John penetrated Bane's body and Bane noted that again the amount was much smaller than would be satisfyingly effective against an entire day of pain.

“Are we sharing morphine, detective? This must be the reason for such a frugal dose. But please, don't feel you need to burden yourself with secrecy. Go ahead and medicate yourself while all the supplies are ready. I hear the drug is quite effective against the effects of alcohol consumption.”

John pulled the emptry needle from Bane's arm and began disassembling it over the sink. His blood was boiling but he kept cool head. He wanted to get a little of his own in properly.

“You know, one of the first things I learned as a skinny kid growing up was how to deal with bullies by ignoring them. Beneath the brilliantly perceptive mind and verbal eloquence, Bane, I know that's all you really are. And most bullies don't rely on Indian burns and dead arms to exercise their demons. Like you, they just talk shit until their victim either cries or throws the first punch.”

Both men new that John's was replying to yesterday's insult.

“Now, I'm not going to cry and I'm not going to punch you either. That's because I know that in ten minutes I'm going to walk out of here. On my way out, I'm going to wave to the guards at the door and then jog freely up the three flights of steps to the lobby. Then, I'll push the doors open and walk out into the sunshine, feel the breeze on my face as I walk to my car and drive out of here. Maybe I'll pt the radio on, and stop at the grocery store, cruise the aisles while I decide what I want for dinner tonight. See children, mothers, grandparents and young people, listen to their conversations and arguments. When I go home, I'll soak in the bathtub with a cold beer, and then sleep in my own bed. These are all things you'll never do. Ever. Whether I do those things, or whether I join a sex club, take a yoga lesson, contract Lyme disease, or spend an entire paycheck on the lottery, the point is _I'm free._ You're not, and you never will be.”

John took a breath and realized the mistake he had made. Bane was already all over it.

“Well. I'm delighted to see you breaking out of your shell, though I needn't tell you how unwise the timing of your little monologue is, when you're supposed to be filling me with false hope for my liberation. But no matter. I will identify my second-in-command to you anyway. But first, I need you to inform me what the state of my troops are. Will you do this?”

John laughed at the word 'troops', but said nothing. He nodded. “What do you want to know?”

“How many of my men do you have, how are they being kept, and how are you apprehending them?

“Well, the 'how' part is easy enough. When we're patrolling the street, if we see a group of men and ask them for identification and they begin shooting at us, that's when we know we don't have a regular citizen. Sometimes we're able to incapacitate them, but usually we have to put them down. Seems al Ghul's brainwashing methods you've applied to your own operations work very well. Some of the subjects are wearing army fatigues, and have no identification when we search their bodies. We bury them. The ones with fingerprints, the ones we know you didn't bring with you, well, we just put them right back where they belong, upstairs-”

“I don't care about them.” Bane interrupted.

“Yeah, I kinda figured you didn't. The unidentified men we've been able to capture, all through incapacitation, have numbered maybe less than five, I believe. They are all upstairs, and in questioning, have refused to speak a single word.”

“Have you applied torture?”

“Of course not. Are you suggesting we should?”

“Of course not.”

John was confused by this strange diversion. 

“I wonder, Detective Blake, when you're walking door to door in your fine city that you love so much, entering the homes of its citizens and demanding that they identify themselves to you, do you ever see a parallel between yourself and the officers of the Gestapo that did the same things to your people so long ago?”

John, who had been resting his weight on his hip against the sink, returned to his feet and starting pulling materials out of his box to give his hands something to do. After a nervous laugh he spoke.

“Unlike the Gestapo, who were aiding acts of genocide, we are simply returning convicted felons to prison. Those that did not give themselves up, have to be apprehended. I will have you know, that no additional charges are being faced by those who return themselves to custody, regardless of their actions during occupation-”

“But those that don't? Those that are 'apprehended', they are punished, are they not? Given an additional sentence? Not even the farmer punishes his livestock when they graze beyond their intended pasture, because no one can blame a living thing for continually striving for freedom. It is the captor's job to keep his intended victims.”

“And, though I have not personally been company to any of these apprehensions, I can't say that my-” John paused and cleared his throat, “-ancestral heritage has caused me to be offended by any historical parallels.”

“Because you were not raised with the faith of your people? That was your father's decision, wasn't it, John Blake? He was ashamed of your mother?”

Flabbergasted would barely describe what John felt.

“I was raised Roman Catholic. I was brought up by priests and nuns, in an orphanage right here in Gotham.My mother died in a car crash, when I was very young. My father loved her very much. It was nobody's choice.” 

The words coming out of John's mouth suddenly brought a bitter memory to surface, the lifeless body of a young boy washed up from the sewer. Pain and anger shot through him, and he turned to face Bane, wanting to lash out on him. He didn't deserve the priveledge of hearing the stories of people like John or Jimmy

“Then we have something in common, John Blake. We both were raised without the guidance of our natural-”

“We have _nothing_ in common.”

John cut him off sharply, and it felt good. He knew that if Bane was reaching out, trying to make a connection between them, John should be playing that and not spitting in his face. But seriously. _Fuck him._

“A red scarf.” Bane's voice was low, sad. The game had stopped being fun.

“Excuse me?”

“You will know him by a dark red scarf. A kerchief he always wears around his neck.”

John understood. He lifted his head, looking at the large man hunched over on the toilet. As John watched, Bane turned to him, a defeated look on his face.

“A red scarf, that's it, that's all you're giving me? No name, physical features, scars, nothing? And won't he remove such a telling identifier like a red scarf if anyone would know him by it?”

“Grey eyes, average to tall height, wiry. Scars: one on his back shoulder, the one we all share...Handsome. And if he is living, I have no doubt the scarf is still in his possession. I was the one that gave it to him.”


	8. Chapter 8

By 10:30 it was already an unseasonably warm Friday morning in May, and John was sweating and yanking at his tie and collar during his drive to Wayne Manor. He now had to agree with Bane's verdict on his aftershave:it was awful, and the stench was filling the small car. He was grateful for the cool musty air of the cave and the water he could splash on his face and neck, washing away the aftershave as well as the tense morning. 

It took him two and half hours two find even a little of what he was looking for on Wayne's computer. Still probably better than GPD offices, though, and minus the half-dozen guys staring over your shoulder, asking a million questions and throwing in their two cents.

It was easy to find the red-scarfed mercenary he was looking for as he went through all of Bane's major media appearances: he was always the one standing closest to his commander holding a large rifle across his chest, with a mixed look of pride and worry across his face. He stood by Bane more like a bodyguard or even a mother than an inferior officer. There was more intimate concern than respect and John felt that their relationship was clearly more complicated than simple allied terrorists. Maybe the two were related?

Watching the footage repeatedly brought more questions than answers. Who was this man who had left Ra's to follow Bane, why Talia al Ghul would be willing to work with him if he was the one who had burned down al Ghul's villa and killed his men, and finally, why did he mean so much to Bane? He felt like the answer was right in front of him, all around him, obvious but beyond his comprehension.

He left the big question to come back to later and decided just to focus on finding where the man might be now. After pressing him, Bane had admitted that the last time had seen 'Barsad' was when Talia had ordered him to prepare the convoy she was leading when she died. That was less than a minute before Bane had been attacked and lost consciousness. 

Gotham had been one of the first US cities to have cameras installed on almost every one of their traffic lights, which had not just been useful for raking in traffic fines but also recorded many other crimes better than any living witness. The already legendary showdown between GPD and Bane's men had taken pace in front of city hall, and John knew that anything available at headquarters would surely also be stored on Wayne's hardrive so he began searching as soon as the idea came to him.

The footage was more difficult to watch than John had expected- although the images were grainy and flat, they still did not hide the horror of what they held. Hundreds of men throwing themselves at an unknown violence, death behind it, for something they were not even sure they could accomplish. Law enforcement is not warfare, the cops who charged those mercenaries, many of them, had nothing but old-fashioned gallantry on their side. John was thankful he could not recognize many of the faces as he watched their bodies riddled with bullets, the men standing dumbly, not knowing what to do until finally being caught in the fire of ruthless and experienced soldiers.

Finally one of the videos showed Talia al Ghul walking purposefully out of the main entrance of city hall and climbing inside one of the Tumblers parked out front. Barsad should have been there, but the surging ocean of bodies around her made it difficult to see particulars in the background behind her stern face. John rewound the video to a point many seconds before she had emerged from the high entrance of the building. A few seconds before her appearance he saw the mercenary with his rifle. He turned to look in the dark shadows behind him, just before Talia could be seen. This time he kept his eye on Barsad as the two walked quickly toward the tumbler. As Talia climbed in, he saw it: quick shots hit his body and he folded like a dropped puppet. 

John rewatched the footage a few more times, as if the scene it portrayed would rethink itself and present something different. He would never meet this incredible mercenary, question him, learn his role in the occupation, or even attempt to bring him to Bane.

 

“We took blood samples of them all, filed them, stored them, and the ones without a match we of course asked other governments to help us out with, but not with much success. Of course. It's not like there's a lot of countries out there that want to take credit for having the terrorists that did this be their natives. So most of them remain unidentified.”

“What about their belongings?”

“Yeah-that's the interesting part, actually.” The pretty young intern leaned in toward John and batted her eyelashes over her fashionable horn-rimmed glasses conspiratorially. “I don't know if they're making voodoo dolls, or if they want to open the world's most morbid museum ever, but they didn't incinerate the clothes along with the bodies. All the clothing and personal affects are being kept in a storeroom in the basement. It's creepy as fuck. Unlabeled, just piled. I hate to say it, but it's kinda Auschwitzy.”

John had to laugh at the second holocaust reference of the day, although he didn't really appreciate it. 

“It couldn't hurt for me to look.”

“No. And as a detective, you know you have clearance. But you could always fain ignorance and demand company. I would hate to be down there alone.”

“I'll be fine.”

The small storeroom had a stainless steel table in the middle of it and two large steel cabinets at each end. Greasy, dark clothes were pouring out of both, and spilling off the table. The brazen odor greeted him immediately, and with his eyes closed John might have believed he was standing in a room with living men.

Unless you knew that almost every single item had been stripped off of a corpse, there would be no reason to find the sight any more dreadful than a ransacked uniform locker. That is, until you notice the bloodstains and bullet-holes that decorated each garment. John started by lifting a few items from the table in front of him; after a cursory viewing, he threw them on one of the only clear patches of floor available. The pile grew quickly, John struggling to keep track of what he had already gone through. He was privilege to a great many smells and textures, the most memorable being the flexible-yet-crusty one of blood-saturated fabric. Blood, like honey, never really dries. Unlike skin and nail, which eventually stiffen and lose the properties that make them so dynamic after they are separated from a living body, blood is haunted with life indefinitely. 

No two articles were exactly alike; each item John touched was torn and mended, sweat-stained and otherwise altered to fit the unique needs of each soldier. Some things seemed hand-sewn, others could have been purchased at a Wal-mart or surplus store, and then there were things that made John wonder what part of the body it was meant for . A person could spend years studying these clothes and piecing together whatever could be learned about a twenty-first century army of mercenaries, and John could understand why the GPD were so reluctant to get rid of them.

He had been through most of the room and began to worry that he was not being thorough enough to find a small red cloth. Although he had seen the man shot, and had even watched his body being basket-tossed into the back of a garbage truck two days later, he felt that he would not rest until he held the red scarf in his hands. Bane had made its importance clear.

He continued searching, fighting to stay focused when each article he held was distracting. Finally he lifted a small but heavy ashen pant that was crammed into the corner of a steel cabinet and whipped it against the door. Something small fell onto the floor with a whisper. John looked on it for at least thirty seconds before bending over to pick it up. It was not the red color he was expecting and he hesitated to accept that he had found what he was looking for. It was not the hot and impatient crimson preferred by most radicals, but rather a solemn and stoic maroon. John believed the copper tones in its scent were an invention of his imagination. 

 

"Face against the wall"

The detective's bored voice echoed through the emptiness of Bane's world. Quickly his hands met the cool surface, and quickly the sensation was followed by the sharp snaps of the magnetic locks.

There was silence. Something was off about the detective's behavior-not the usual exasperated sighs and clatter of nursing supplies over the sink. He listened and heard the unmistakeable sound of bare feet shuffling toward him, complete with the sound of tiny cracks of toe and ankle joints. Someone was behind, him, and it wasn't the detective.

"Brother.”

The short utterance was not complete before Bane had turned his body to face him. Before his eyes was the one that he had been aching for all these nights, his only regret in all this mess. He was perfect, too. The shadow on his cheek and the muss of his hair was not more unruly than it had ever been. Whatever he had been through, it could not have been much. Even the mischief in his expression was untarnished. He opened his mouth to speak again, Bane's eyes still devouring this sight like a man on the verge of starvation.

“I see how quickly you grant your devoted obeisance to the first pretty face who enters your life when my influence is not there to guide you. For shame. Now I see why you always insisted at my being by your si-"

But Bane was already smashing his face against Barsad's, taking in his scent for the first time. He realized their was still something separating them, and after violently tearing away the bandages covering his face, he began clumsily smearing his mouth across the bearded face, the sloppy and inexperienced attempts of a man giving into an instinct that he had never before been able to satisfy. When his mouth found Barsad's his jaw fought in a futile struggle to yank apart the wires that kept it shut, the sharp twisted ends cutting the inside of his cheeks. Barsad was kissing him back now, taking stitched lips into his own mouth, the hurt as welcomed as the burn his whiskers had caused the wounded face. Bane, wanting to remember ever aspect of this tried to memorize the feeling as well as the taste, but there was something wrong: he was aware of a dry bitterness where he had expected to discover the sweetest flavor.

Then Barsad pulled suddenly Bane's face away from him with an inhuman strength. They locked eyes, and Bane was paralyzed as he read fear in the eyes that held him.

"Who's face is this? Who's lips are you kissing me with? What is that old cliche about no man ever stepping onto the same river twice?"

From the look on his face, Barsad's words seemed as terrifying and strange to the speaker as they did to the listener. 

"Ask yourself, finally, if you can say for certain that you did not die with me."

 

 

The red scarf was folded and tucked deeply in John's left pocket, where it weighed heavier than if he had filled it with pennies. The fact that he had checked several times to make sure it was not visible was a sign that he recognized how undesirable its liberated appearance would be. Once he imagined himself handing it over, he began hearing Bane's words over and over again in his head, when he told John of his certainty that this Barsad would be wearing the scarf even if it threatened his life or freedom. 

John was standing at the door of Bane's cell where he could see Bane's splayed legs and nude feet lying lifelessly on the cold floor. He checked the invisibility of his pocket's contents one last time before using the intercom.

Bane was still lost behind his eyelids, but his ears heard the intercom click on, and the distorted voice that came through finally drew back the curtains of consciousness.

“It's me.”

Bane heard sadness and familiarity so clear in his voice that he even said the two words to himself. While he may still have felt the dream's effect in his heart, it did not cloud his awareness as much as it might have to someone without the feral nature that kept him sharp enough to break a handcuff as well as man's hand while on the brink of death. If he did not rise at John's voice, it was because he knew he didn't have to.

The door and lock made the usual clatter but John's steps were careful, almost respectful. His politeness and the increasing dread in Bane's chest brought him up to a sitting position. The rustle of his movement caused John to turn his head around from the sink where he was laying out materials and smile gently before gesturing over to the toilet with his eyes. He obviously wasn't planning on using handcuffs.

Having lived a life filled with either bitter cold or vicious human relationships, any warmth and easy trust was disarming. Like a grateful dog, Bane crept quickly and quietly to the toilet before his generous master could change his mind. Once seated he looked into John's eyes to read what burden was resting in them, looking for reason to doubt what he already knew. There was on John's face that look of grace that comes from only the most genuine compassionate feeling. It was beautiful, a rare sight for Bane, and he indulged his eyes too long-John turned to him and their eyes met.

The undeniable shame in Bane's eyes as he turned from John's look struck him like a thunderbolt. The man had been broken, and John did not feel the triumph and pride, or even the lustful possession he had imagined, craved he would. It was only heartbreaking.

“Are you ready?”

His voice cracked like it always did when he was emotionally overwhelmed, but this was the first time he was glad for it. He wanted the vulnerability in its tone to be comforting.

Bane's eyes moved back up only far enough for John to see how they were heavy with tears. When he saw the needle he creased his brow in disgust, forcing one tear to spill over his cheek. He had been so distracted that he had forgotten what John was doing.

“I don't want it.”

John was impressed at how he could speak with so much control and clarity through emotion and gritted teeth, unlike him.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. I don't need it anymore. Proceed with the rest.”

With this pretense of control, Bane straightened his back, presenting himself to John. Seeing this, but still in disbelief, John tried to lay the syringe on the counter but it required every ounce of his focus to move through this simple action. The emotion in the room, its elusive meaning and the inability of either man to begin its explication made him feel like he was stuck in a a film moving one frame per second. The soft clink of the needle on the porcelain reminded him of a coin meeting the bottom of a swimming pool heard from under the surface, which was appropriate since the tension in in the atmosphere was as heavy as water.

Finding the end he had tucked away that morning in Bane's facial wrappings, he began slowly unraveling, enjoying the warmth left from his skull. Pulling away the strip that had rested below his eyes, he allowed his fingertips to brush the remnants of his tears only long enough for it not be noticed by anyone but himself. This was the first time, though, that he was fully aware of what he was doing: there was no denial, excuses, or shame. He had consciously wanted to touch the fresh tears of this man because he liked him, cared for him, and knew he was about to destroy him with what he had to share. He took a deep breath as he continued to unravel the gauze, just as he felt his own shell unraveling, shedding the dead and heavy skin that he had been carrying like one of Dante's tortured creatures.

Another moist spot passed through his fingertips, this one with a viscosity that he recognized as saliva.

“You've sleeping all day today, huh?”

His spoke tenderly, but teasingly, and Bane turned to see a playful smirk that charmed him when he didn't want to be charmed.

“I believe so. I dreamed you were here.” His voice broke, he stopped himself from describing the rest. “It seemed very real, but it wasn't. You were what woke me.”

Touched by the news that Bane had dreamed about him, John laughed

“We have something in common. We're both droolers. I can tell you've been sleeping really hard, because the same thing happens to me.”

Bane remembered when John had spitefully insisted that they had nothing in common only that morning, but did not want to bring it up. Instead his eyes dropped down to John's hands, holding the wet and dirty gauze in front of his crotch.

“It can get embarrassing, you know? Stains on your pillow the other guys make fun of, and then there's, y'know...girls.”

“I wouldn't know”

“No? You never slept with anyone before?” 

“I didn't say that.”

Bane had been watching as John's thumb unconsciously caressed the wet gauze in a loving circular motion. He was hypnotized by the fluid movement, and craved such a touch on his own skin, but felt the focus of his vision being pulled past the moving hand to the part of John's body just beyond them. He lifted his arm and began reaching forward slowly, his free and bold hand brushing past John's, their fingertips meeting as John himself opened his own hands in anticipation of the touch, inviting it, and left stunned as Bane continued reaching past the gauze filled hands to John's left pocket, gently pulling it towards him just enough to make John stumble forward two small steps so that Bane could reach inside and investigate the rectangular bulge he had noticed there. Both were breathless as Bane's hand easily located the familiar object and began pulling it slowly out with two fingers, Bane trying to savor the last seconds of his life that he could deny that he had lost the one thing he had loved more than anything in his life.


End file.
